benchmark report
airline marketing
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.
09
