As a media evaluation agency headquartered in the UK that does a lot of international business, my colleagues at Metrica and I have done more than our fair share of travel with British Airways over the last few years. 

Luckily for us we didn't happen to be flying in those awful early weeks when Terminal 5 fist opened - to tremendous fanfare, but ultimately global embarrassment.  BAA's Chairman, Sir Nigel Rudd had claimed it would put Heathrow at "the leading edge of global travel" calling it "a living, breathing advertisement for Britain's ambition". Instead it received weeks of press comment along the lines of "Catalogue of Errors led to T5 fiasco" which not even BA's highly-professional in-house communication teams and PR agency were able to do much about.

And it wasn't just the mainstream media that were having a field day, but BA's customers and potential customers were all chatting about it online in social networks and blogs - as the chart and link from Google trends below shows.  It doesn't need Metrica's media analysis consultancy skills to tell you that the spike of buzz at the launch of T5 was dominated by unfavourable coverage! 

Happily for BA, and indeed BAA, the bad early days of T5 now seem to be firmly behind it.  All passengers that I have talked to who have used the terminal recently have been full of praise for its efficiency, speed and ease of use.  So I was particularly pleased this morning to hear on BBC Radio 4 and then to read in today's "Guardian" that BA is launching an advertising campaign tomorrow based around the slogan: "Terminal 5 is working".

What I particularly like is the freshness and daringness of this campaign which will be providing live updates detailing percentages of late flights, time taken to get to check-in etc.  Not only is this modern confident communications, but it also tips a nod to the 'news now' generation of media consumers.  No longer does the audience want to read old facts, and old news; they want the latest information, and they want it now.  If the traditional marketing channels aren't able to deliver it, then they will look more and more for their news and information on the web and via social networks.  It's an advertising concept of its time so congratulations to ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty for the creative work and good luck to GFK who will be conducting the research for the ads each morning. 

It's nice to see BA using it's market research in such an innovative way.  I will follow the campaign closely and can't wait to see how BA's PR teams capitalise on these ads.  We will track the reaction to it in the social media environment with great interest.

Finally, on the subject of BBH, you have to admire their creative work - as so well demonstrated by their own recent viral work for this year's graduate recruitment drive below

Great acting I thought by the young man in that film, and I wonder if he grew up to be another of Metrica's favourite blog authors, Chris Reed, of The Ginger Monkey... :-)