Client
Etihad Airways is the National Airline of the United Arab Emirates. The airline was set up by a Royal decree in July 2003, with Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE, as its hub.

Objective
As the world’s fastest growing airline, Etihad increasingly began to attract huge amounts of media interest. To facilitate this surge in interest, the Corporate Communications team needed a central point of contact to provide the media with an on-line library of Etihad’s milestones and announcements. By providing a consistent supply of information to the media Etihad intended to maintain important relationships with journalists from across the world. In addition to this, the airline wanted to streamline their internal communications to ensure swift, appropriate responses to the many, varying issues facing a modern airline in today’s aviation industry.

Solution
Four Communications proposed that Etihad use one or more elements of The Centre, Four’s tailored suite of on-line communications tools. The digital team designed and built a Media Centre to provide an on-line information portal for communication with the journalist community. This included a content management system to allow the Corporate Communications team full control over which announcements, stories and images are uploaded and when.
To compliment the external communication of the Media Centre, Four’s digital team also developed the Etihad Issues Centre, a bespoke back-end system to enable in efficient internal communication on all possible issues surrounding the airline. This fully customised system allows various levels of authority throughout the airline’s employees to view, edit, and submit pres releases, statements or Q&A sheets. All submissions are then accessible by a higher authority in the organisation for approval or rejection.

Result
Etihad Airways currently uses the Media Centre to communicate with over 650 journalists worldwide. Each of these journalists have registered their details with the site, allowing Etihad to take control of their media contacts and create direct relationships with their target markets and creating less dependence on public relations agencies solely for their contacts.
The ownership of this data lends itself well to the future development of an Etihad Contact Centre, and Etihad Agency Centre, the remaining elements of The Centre communications tools.