Virgin Australia The Romance Is Back | After years of operating as an LCC in the Australian market, Virgin Australia underwent a major metamorphosis last year. It rebranded and repositioned itself as a ‘new world carrier’, adopting a new model that focuses on attracting more business travellers and offering a premium passenger experience. The airline has just launched the latest push of its new ‘no-frills chic’ brand image with its new commercial titled “The Romance is Back.” The video features one of the airline's flagship Airbus A330 aircraft coming together mechanically in a stylized way. The imagery is quickly followed by copy reading “It takes more than an amazing aircraft to make an amazing airline,” and the cameras pan out to show a large group of Virgin Australia staff walking stylishly towards the new plane in their new uniforms. The spot was directed by Australian director Daniel Askil and is set against the 1960s-style song S'Wonderful. The spot, uploaded by the airline to YouTube on September 28, was released the next day as part of the television broadcast of the widely-watched Australian Football League Grand Final, “one of the highest rating broadcasts of the year in Australia.” Within a week, the ad had generated nearly 100,000 views on YouTube, and was followed up by a print and web campaign using images from the video, showcasing people at the forefront of the airline.
Jeju Air x BigBang | South Korea's entertainment industry has been burgeoning since the inception of the Hallyu phenomenon. Brands across Asia have been quick to collaborate in a variety of ways. In Korea, Jeju Air has recently partnered with BigBang, a South Korean boy band that enjoys immense popularity in the country as well as the region, particularly among the younger demographic. As part of the partnership, Jeju Air and Big Bang launched a co-branded website for fans in Korea and the airline prominently features a portrait of the fve-member band on the sides of one of its 737s. Jeju Air is also sponsoring BigBang's tour through Hong Kong, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, and Japan, while the band has endorsed Jeju Air as their preferred carrier. Through the collaboration with BigBang, Jeju Airlines expects to increase the number of visitors to South Korea from Japan and other Asian countries. For example, to promote its flights to Seoul and Busan from Hong Kong, Jeju Air also handed out an airplane model to those who booked a round-trip ticket from Hong Kong, which created a surge in bookings due to Big Bang’s popularity. British Airways, meanwhile, earlier this year teamed up with British boy band One Direction to tap into One Direction's broad fan base in order to raise money for the Comic Relief charity.
10 | Airline Marketing Benchmark Report | October 2012
