Virgin Atlantic ‘Air-prentice’ | Over the last year, Virgin Atlantic announced a major investment in product and service upgrades valued at GBP100 million. One of the major projects has been a full refurbishing of the airline's ageing 747 fleet. To commemorate the occasion, Virgin Atlantic launched a competition entitled “Air-Prentice” (modeled after Donald Trump's 'The Apprentice') to search for a “junior approvals associate” to testdrive the new inflight product.
JetBlue ‘Simply Marble-ous’ | Among global brands around the globe, the emphasis on community development and environmental consciousness has been on an increaseon the rise in recent years with brands globally. A recent airline example in the airline space comes from JetBlue in the United States, whowhich, during a collaboration with Boston-based environmental group Save the Harbor, created a ‘surprise n experience’ for Massachusetts beach-goers throughout thethis summer.
The competition, inspired by Richard Branson's own passion for flying, brought in 600 applicants, of whom 10 year-old Billy Yeomans was chosen to spend a day on board a newly-refurbished Virgin Atlantic 747 that departed from London Gatwick Airport. From the experience, Billy had to create a full report on the food, in-flight entertainment system, cabin crew and redesigned seats and hand it to Branson for a “review.” A video of Billy's experience was posted on Virgin Atlantic's YouTube channel, where it garnered over 5000 unique views.
In its 'Simply Marble-ous' campaign JetBlue released 300 glass marbles on public beaches throughout the Greater Boston region after a 100-volunteer-strong cleanup mission in June. The bright blue marbles, were made of a sand-based environmentally recycled glass, in line with the conservation mission of the organizations involved, and were part of a JetBlue contest: Those who found a blue marble on any of the 12+ Boston-area beaches would be entered in a draw from which fve people would win 40,000 TrueBlue points. Begun in June, the treasure hunt ends October 8. To enter the contest, participants simply have to submit a photo of themselves with one of the blue marbles to Save the Harbor's Facebook page.
Billy was also given the task of being an advisor to Branson on “any future developments to Virgin Atlantic's aircraft that are focused on children.” For an airline with a reputation as flashy as Virgin, the 'Air-prentice' exercise can be seen as an interesting way to frame and align the brand with the family-travel market. The competition also creates an avenue to promote product upgrades.
With the contest JetBlue aimed to drive awareness about the growing polution of the sea and beaches, and align itself with a local cause. The airline’s effort resulted in wide publicity across local Boston-area media, as well as a host of user-generated videos on YouTube.
5 | Airline Marketing Benchmark Report | October 2012
