benchmark report
airline marketing
A monthly selection of the most innovative marketing campaigns launched by airlines around the world SimpliFlying | airlinetrends.com June 2013
benchmark report
airline marketing
welcome. Published by market research agency airlinetrends.com and airline branding specialist SimpliFlying, the Airline Marketing Benchmark Repor t contains a wide range of airline marketing case studies each month, providing you with the latest and most innovative social, digital, experiential and traditional airline marketing campaigns recently launched by airlines around the world. Whether you’re looking for inspiration or are eager to help your airline move into the nex t stage of engagement, while also understanding how your airline marketing initiatives compare to campaigns from competitors in general, these repor ts are indispensable for airline professionals working in the f ield of marketing and corporate communications. The monthly repor ts also helps agencies that work with airlines stay on top of the latest innovative airline marketing initiatives.
inside Experiential
For any questions about the repor t, please contact Shubhodeep Pal at shubhodeep@simplif lying.com. As innovative campaigns come in all shapes and sizes, the Airline Marketing Benchmark Repor t is categorized into the following four themes:
Faced with ever more experienced consumers, who routinely ignore the commercials and ads thrown at them, airline brands are finding new ways to break through the adver tising clutter to reach consumers.
Social Media
Besides engaging their online audience via Facebook and Twitter-based campaigns, the airline industry is also busy experimenting with new social media platforms.
Digital / Online
With the huge popularity of smar tphones and tablets, airlines are tapping into these digital platforms to engage consumers, as well as releasing videos online which they hope will go viral.
Traditional
Despite the current focus on social, digital and experiential campaigns, airlines continue to serve up creative, traditional media-based, initiatives in order to reach a mass audience.
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benchmark report
airline marketing
Air New Zealand #cuddleclass tour
experiental
the big British invite British Airways has recently invested into advertising the brand internationally to entice a wider audience away from the domestic reach of the UK. Hosted in New York in March, The Big British Invite was a taste of London for resident NYers to whet their appetite to make the trip ‘across the pond’. The 2-day pop-up event showcased the famous cultural scenes shaping a contemporary UK and ranged from food and fashion to music and nightlife. Formed as a series of zones, the experience star ted by transpor ting quests into a British Airways pseudoterminal, where they embarked on a journey through Britain, being issued with a boarding pass, featuring a map of the event, wifi instructions and the hash tag #BigBritishInvite. After checking in with their flight attendant (British vocal ar tist
Estelle was just one of the famous tourguides), visitors interacted with some of the hippest retailers, food fixtures and nightlife trend-setters currently at the forefront of British culture.
Air New Zealand created a niche product when they launched their Skycouch seat in 2011, featuring a raisable leg rest on a row of three economy seats that turns the seats into a large lounge-style bed.
Passers by also had the oppor tunity to win, by using social media site Twitter and photo sharing site Instagram and simply uploading an image of the van using the hashtag #CuddleClassTour.
Collaborating with Visit Britian, BA par tnered with brands such as Liber ty of London, WAH Nails, Sanderson, Highlands Restaurant Group and Beefeater.
To celebrate and fur ther market this innovation, Air New Zealand took to the streets of London in May in a customised van that had onboard the economy skycouch product and treats ranging from cuddles and photos on the Skycouch with buff Californian male and female models, to e-scratchcards on an iPad with instant spot prizes like NZ wine up for grabs.
Air New Zealand Regional General Manager Americas, UK and Europe, Chris Myers spoke about the skycouch on the tour. “Skycouch has reignited customers’ passion for travel and revolutionised the onboard Economy experience. Not only does it help passengers to arrive at their destinations feeling rested and ready to go, it enables them to lie down and be as comfor table as they would be on their sofa at home.”
The temporary space was designed as a way to “Surprise and delight international travelers” as stated by John McDonald, Americas Vice President, British Airways. “British Airways hosts more than 3,000 travelers between New York and London every day, and with refreshed aircrafts, smar ter cabins and elegant lounges we pride ourselves on going above and beyond for our customers.”
The e-scratchcards on the iPads also offered the chance for someone to win pair of return tickets to Palm Springs, California and included hotel stays and car hire from Her tz.
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airline marketing
Royal Brunei Airlines ‘route to relaxation’
Delta T4 experience SoHo New York featured yet another temporary ‘airport’ space this month, as Delta took over a historic cast-iron building on West Broadway and Broome St. and turned it into a mini-airport. As JFK’s Terminal 4 was due to open, the ‘Terminal 4 Experience’ designed in part by Delta’s brand agency Lippincott was created to showcase the feel, detail and finishes of the new terminal to generate interest before the grand-opening of the company’s state-of-the-art, USD 1.4 billion Terminal. Photos available here. The space was open during the first three weeks of May, and had all the amenities of the actual JFK terminal and even offered $4 lunch boxes served on a conveyor belt simulating a baggage carousel. “We wanted to give New Yorkers something
they can touch,” said Gail Grimmett, Delta’s senior vice president New York. The entire second floor of the SoHo pop-up dubbed ‘T4X’ was turned into a copy of Delta’s Thom Filicia-designed Sky Deck and its Sky Club, both available via annual membership or to premium ticket holders. On the 23rd May, British Singer Ed Sheeran hosted a concer t at the T4X to celebrate the launch of the actual terminal opening the following day. Delta repor tedly paid close to six-figures for the six-week rental of the building, which formerly housed a Tommy Hilfiger boutique and Johnny Walker pop-up.
Royal Brunei Airlines is still a relatively untapped ‘Kangaroo Route’ carrier, and with it’s recent rebranding has pushed itself to become an international player. While other airlines do encourage passengers to make a stop over in Asia or the Middle East on route to Australia, the Kangaroo route with Royal Brunei is unique in offering travellers a ‘double stop’ opportunity. Passengers could consider extending their layover with either or both a stop in Dubai for luxury shopping and dining and a second break in Brunei to experience the wilder side including rainforest treks, trips to the renowned water village and diving excursions. To help reinforce this key message, Royal Brunei Airlines has activated an experiential marketing campaign and
media par tnership with Global Radio to help raise awareness of its recently improved service to Melbourne from London. The activity saw RB staff and Capital FM street stars take over London’s Earls Court tube station (which serves an area with a large Australian population) with the distribution of ‘route to relaxation’ sleeping masks designed to encourage consumers to think about the different ways they unwind in a soft marketing campaign supported by billboard advertising. UK agency Good Relations said the promotion was designed to amplify Royal Brunei’s new brand promise directly to consumers, and offered tickets in a competition to Dubai, Brunei, Kota Kinabalu and Melbourne.
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airline marketing
American Airlines x Klout
social
Etihad mapped out Etihad Airways has just launched an online ‘mapping tool’ developed in cooperation with LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network, to make it easier to message new contacts, arrange meetings and be more productive while travelling. Now users of the branded etihadmappedout.com can visually see their network, displayed on a world map, allowing users to plan the journey’s and networks easily. It’s a searchable site, that allows users to filter by geographical area, industry or even by the level of connection they have to their linked users in LinkedIn. The clever and subtle branded element to this is that the Etihad route map can be overlaid, showing the best way to travel to the highlighted contacts.
Peter Baumgar tner, Etihad Airways’ chief commercial officer, explained: “As a global airline, Etihad Airways connects points and people from across the globe, so our Etihad Mapped-Out tool which taps into LinkedIn’s global audience of over 200 million is an extension of that mission. Fredrik Bernsel, sales director for EMEA and LATAM Par tners at LinkedIn, said: “A good network of contacts is essential for business success and this innovative initiative from Etihad Airways using LinkedIn’s APIs enables Etihad’s customers to easily connect with their LinkedIn network while travelling, making it even simpler to get business done and be productive.”
American Airlines recently joined forces with social ranking website Klout to offer free passes to American’s first class lounges based purely on your social standing on social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and YouTube. Having to achieve a worthwhile score is based on a computer algorithm that measures your twitter usage. Klout, which offers deals to those with high “Klout scores,” including brands such as Sony, Chevrolet or Samsung is offering those with a 55 or above to qualify for a one-day pass to American Airlines’ Admirals Club in 40 different airpor ts — regardless of whether they’re booked on one of the carrier’s flights.
media, in hopes to earn mentions in their news feeds. Within the first 24 hours alone, twitter managed to acheive 4,508 mentions of the promotion, creating over 21 milion impressions. This isn’t the first time that Klout have par tnered with an airline. In May last year, they par tnered with Cathay Pacific for two months, offering access to their San Francisco lounge as long as the Klout member had a score of over 40.
This par tnership is another attempt by brand marketers to develop and grown the brands content within social
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airline marketing
Turkish Airlines ‘Wings of FC Barcelona’
Iberia’s #iberiamayors Think you know your city better than most? Or at least better than the inf light magazine you are reading? Iberia have identif ied that sometimes their travellers know the cities better than them and are allowing fans share their own vision of their hometowns, with places off the beaten path that are rarely included in traditional guides. As travelers are constantly seeking tips and information about their next destinations, Iberia has developed a way to involve more than 1 million Iberia fans and followers by creating video travel guides on several of its destinations, resourced under the twitter tag #IberiaMayors, their IberiaMayors facebook page and on their dedicated website www.iberiamayors.com
Incentivizing the community to create an initial 20 user-generated city video guides in Spain, Europe, Latin America and the US, the winners will be awarded with a tempting prize of 120,000 Avios, sufficient for an international round-trip flight for two. More than 500 submissions have been received so far from Iberia’s social community, with videos and stories sharing their recommendations for each destination. Just one par ticipant will be chosen for each destination to be its “Iberia Mayor” and star in the official video guide.
Self confessed fan of football, Turkish airlines offered the chance of a lifetime to the global fanbase of FC Barcelona in a new Facebook app which invited fans to fill a vir tual stadium as a digital competition campaign. Dubbed “Wings of Barcelona”, the competition was open to fans in over 200 countries and the prize, for eight winners, who brought the highest number of friends to the stadium, was a three-day trip to the city to see Barcelona take on Valledolid in the last game of the season, as well as two signed jerseys and 20 other jerseys for runners up.
many people along as they can. This was a great way of using both a larger known global football brand and degrees of seperation on social networking sites to increase Turkish Airways reach across not only their current markets, but future expanding markets too. The application reached more than 1.3 Million users and they invited almost 315,000 people. Monthly users of the app has exceed 308,000.
Users of the app, which could be accessed on Turkish Airlines’ Facebook page, were required to book seats in a vir tual Nou Camp stadium before trying to tempt as
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airline marketing
China Airlines reunites long lost camera & photographer What happens when an employee finds “something strange” on a beach in Taiwan and took a closer look and realized “Oh this is a camera.” Well, if you are China Airlines, you star t a worldwide campaign to find the owner so as to reunite them with the photos still on the camera. The Canon camera, which after 5 and a half years later, covered in barnacles, managed to perfectly preserve the memory card still inside. “We checked the memory card and found lots of pictures” says Bruce Chen, General Manager of the China Airlines Honolulu Branch The pictures are from an August 2007 diving trip in Kaanapali, Hawaii where perhaps, the camera drifted away, and the owner wrote it off as gone for good. Until it washed ashore over half a decade later,
digital & mobile
BalticMiles ‘burn the miles’ more than six thousand miles away, on the eastern coast of Taiwan. Spotting a PR oppor tunity, the airline launched the worldwide campaign on Facebook to reunite the camera with the owner and can give her the surprise of her life. It went viral and was picked up by news channels around the world. Par t of this charitable campaign was to provide the owner, now identified as Lindsay Scallan with an open ticket from China Airlines to pick up the camera in person in Taiwan.
airBaltic has devised a scheme offering members of its frequent flyers’ program bonus points for burning calories. The airline has launched a beta version of a branded mobile app called ‘Burn the Miles’, which will connect to spor ts trackers such as Nike+. If users burn as many calories as miles flown within 24 hours, they can earn 100 extra miles. “We created the first App with a technology that syncs data to a nonspor ts platform on demand by connecting to running services such as Nike+, endomondo, fitbit and more.” says MRM Frankfur t who exclusively developed the product for airBaltic. “We ensure ease of use: the member‘s flown miles are automatically transferred to the app and compared with the calories
to burn. If the calories are burned on time after the members round trip, animations celebrate their hit. And data visualizations show the goals and ranking to others.” To suppor t this campaign, Air Baltic are asking users to provide tips about keeping in great shape on their Facebook page. From training programs to healthy eating ideas. Users who share their tips with BalticMiles will receive 5000 bonus Points. After thousands of burned calories within a few weeks, BalticMiles will soon launch a promotional campaign for its non-f lying members. At the same time the already integrated gamif ication factor will be even more prominent, by including a ranking within the App.
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airline marketing
Virgin America ‘getting lucky at 35,000ft’
digital
Aegean ‘take me there’ Based on research that over 1 million Greeks are currently living or working in another European country, Aegean Airlines have followed suit of other carriers such as Jetstar (who recently ran the competition ‘Take On The World’) who are trying to help reunite families and loved ones. Aegean are making a generous promise, that for every day until the end of 2013, they will offer an entrant to their new ‘Take Me There’ competition a free trip from many of their European destinations to a dozen Greek destinations and vice versa. Aegean spoke about the competition “[the competition] will provide one lucky par ticipant with a unique oppor tunity to claim a return ticket to any destination in the company’s network, both within
Greece and abroad, to visit friends or relatives that they have missed.” All they are asking is for applicants (who are over 18) to tell Aegean on their dedicated website who it is they want to meet and the story behind why they want to see them. Each application lasts for 30 days, meaning every applicant can reapply every month to be considered for the free return tickets. The competition has been suppor ted by a series of professionally shot videos who explain the story of three winners and the reasons why they wanted to travel.
In true Virgin style, the airline is playing the flir ting card to promote its new seatto-seat delivery service, encouraging passengers to “send an in-flight cocktail to that friendly stranger in seat 4A – and then follow up with a text message using the seat-to-seat chat function also on Red.” Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson also helped introduce the new seat-to-seat feature with a humorous video called “Sir Richard Branson’s Guide to Getting Lucky at 35,000 Feet.” The video, with a stereotypical comical soundtrack shot in his London office, plays to the Virgin mogul’s self confessed reputation of a modern day Casanova. The tone of the video is set instantaneously as a tongue-in-cheek homage to a British public information film.
The viral campaign (with over 120,000 views), featured by news channels around the world, star ts with Branson saying: “People ask me, ‘Your Excellency, how do you always end up on top?’ and the answer is, I don’t. Sometimes I end up in the mouth of a whale shark,” – referring to an incident in 2011 when he accidentally swam into the mouth of a whale shark in Mexico. “But enough about me. Here’s my guide to getting lucky at 35,000 feet.” The rest of the fantastical video plays to the rest of Sir Richard Bransons remarkable claims, which obviously can’t be matched, thus promoting the in-seat ordering system as a way to flir t with another passenger. (even though in reality its main use would be to order food for members of a group and/or family who weren’t able to sit together)
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traditional
British Airways ‘experience Britain’
Lufthansa ‘these germans’ Playing to cultural stereotypes is a very risky game when it comes to global adver tising campaigns. Especially when having a French person to talk about the stereotypicality of Germans. But it is with this brash insensitivity, there is great oppor tunity for carefully crafted humour, and even more so when it is a German company sending up the Germans’ themselves.
Germans do right along the way — always so precise, punctual, and perfectly organized, of course. “This constant perfectionism?” he asks at the end, “fantastique.”
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No it’s London’s famous landmarks. Singapore, last month, received it’s first contemporary glympse of life inside London through the eyes of British Airways.
Notoriously Lufthansa has been a very straight laced and business-professional company when it comes to their brand image. So when a new advertising campaign adds a little humour, people do sit up and take notice.
However, this isn’t the first campaign that has injected a bit of humour into the Lufthansa brand. With their flat beds that were released last year, a softer, more relaxed campaign was released to showcase the product. Last year also featured an advert starring the BayernMünchen football team with a child who is desperate for an autograph, but rushes past the football team, and goes straight to the flight crew for their signature instead.
Illustrator Peter Jaworowski and the team at agency BBH Singapore pieced together 17 images of iconic London to showcase the city as a destination to be explored. Featuring such items as simple as a cup of tea, or fish and chips (two British staples), alongside iconic architecture as St Marys Axe or Wembley stadium, the idea was to create a fully inclusive image of the many different elements that makes London special.
The video features a disdainful French businessman goes from hotel to business class while pointing out everything the
It seems the latest adver tising video is a step futher in the same direction, showing a deeper shift in Lufthansa’s brand image.
Forming them into an image of a plane schematic with the recognisable tailfin of a British Airways plane, they have cleverly
managed to package the adver tisment. Sat alongside the 17 items, each numbered and explained in detail at the bottom of the adver t, is the Royal crown, par t of the crest they are now repainting onto each aircraft as a promise of their ethos and brand slogan ‘To fly, to serve’. The adver t makes use of the descriptions well, adding a bit of ‘tongue-in-cheek’ British humour to the image. One such example is ‘Buckingham Palace - One prince still up for grabs’. After launching in Singapore first, the adver tising campaign has now been rolled out to other regions too.
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airline marketing
Qantas ‘stories for every journey’ In a time where everyone picks up an iPad or Kindle before picking up a traditional book, such a project seems perhaps a little out of touch in today’s world, but actually Droga 5, Qantas’ new brand agency, have come up with a great solution to promoting the breadth network of routes ranging from shor t to long haul. The agency worked with international publishing house Hachette using their expertise in the area to create a perfect collection of ten stories, which were targetted towards the Qantas Platinum Flyers, who skew male. Based on research, that means non-fiction, thrillers and crimebased stories are the most popular choices. The reason this project is so noteable, is that the books are commissioned to be in length to be finished on certain
routes, including breaks for food and a nap. “According to our literary friends at Hachette, the average reader consumes between 200 and 300 words per minute, which equates to about a page per minute,” said Droga5 creative chairman David Nobay. That idea was applied more specifically to the shor ter novels and flights, but “for the longer flights, we accounted some napping time and meals” Each book’s cover was designed by award-winning ar t director/designer Paul Belford, who was behind campaigns for The Economist, Sony Playstation and Waterstones. Stephanie Tully, CMO Qantas Loyalty, said the tactile experience and custom-created books are reflective of the sophistication of the brand, a trait that’s Qantas is focusing on more than ever thanks to its recent partnership with luxury airline Emirates.
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airline marketing
about us. At SimpliFlying, we believe in thinking differently about aviation marketing. We thrive at the intersection of aviation and marketing, and in the past four years have advised over 30 airlines and airports on customer engagement and marketing strategy. Our growing clientele includes Airbus, LATAM Airlines, Turkish Airlines, Toronto Pearson and more. One of the top five most influential on Twitter with over 12,000 followers, with over a million YouTube views, SimpliFlying. com is also recognised by Flightglobal as one of the Top 2 blogs on aviation.
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