benchmark report
airline marketing
A monthly selection of the most innovative marketing campaigns launched by airlines around the world SimpliFlying | airlinetrends.com August 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
experiental
heineken ‘departure route’
virgin atlantic ‘no ordinary park bench’
Although not specifically from an airline, the latest airpor t publicity stunt from Heineken truly embodies the brewery’s adventurous spirit, and showcases how airlines can learn from savvy consumer brands.
Vienna, even though he had been planning a six-week visit with his grandparents, but soon learned he would be headed to Cyprus on an evening flight. Heineken gave him USD2,000 to cover expenses and booked him into a hotel for two nights.
Twice in July, Heineken and its ad agency Wieden + Kennedy in New York set up a ‘travel’ board at JFK’s Terminal 8 and dared travellers to play “Depar ture Roulette”— changing their planned destination to a more exotic random location with the press of a button. ‘Contestants’ had to agree to drop their existing travel plans— without knowing the new destination first—and immediately board a flight to the new place.
W+K set up the board again two days later, and this time documented the game play on film, which has already been watched over 2 million times in a month.
One man, who played the game, and ended up going to Cyprus instead of
The game is inspired by “Dropped,” the new Heineken campaign that launched a month ago from W+K Amsterdam in which four men are sent to remote destinations and film their adventures, and this current campaign neatly links into the Dropped campaign with the twitter hashtag #dropped.
As we reported earlier this year, Virgin Atlantic has recently been driving it’s promotional efforts in the US, in a way to communicate its point of difference between itself and it’s competitors. The British airline likes to show that it does things differently, and their latest award winning campaign has done just that.
difference. Selecting their chosen film or game from a touch-screen placed in front of them, brought their favourite characters to life as they charged through the park. Dozens of extras were used to recreate space invaders or a period costume drama, including characters on horseback.
Virgin’s latest efforts involved a park bench in New York City that the airline had specifically built to mimic one of their aircraft seats. Passers by, who took refuge on the seat were treated to a little Upper Class service from Virgin Atlantic.
The events were documented on film and were quickly broadcast on YouTube and twitter, the video receiving 250,000 hits in one month alone. Promoting the airline’s unusual experiment, airline CEO Sir Richard Branson took to Twitter to ask: “Is this the world’s best bench?”
The par ticipants were offered champagne by Virgin Atlantic crew and even a menu to choose their cooked lunch and selection of desser ts. But the main event was as the members of the public were treated to some ‘in flight entertainment’ with a
The elaborate publicity stunt was watched by over 10,000 spectators. NYC based website traffic increased 12%, NYC to London bookings were up 8% and 10% booked Virgin Atlantic for the first time.
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airline marketing
british airways ‘silent picturehouse’
jetblue ‘points don’t expire’ Manhattan, NYC was treated to a big blue double decker bus last month, dishing out popsicles to passers by in the streets of the fairly hot city. The bus was par t of a campaign run by JetBlue, who’s largest hub serves the New York region. The iced treats included a message on the wrapping, highlighting the fact the airline’s TrueBlue frequent f lyer miles now no longer expire. Highlighted on their Facebook page, “Popsicles will melt (or get eaten), but TrueBlue points no longer expire! New York’s Hometown Airline™ is celebrating ever-lasting points by giving away free People’s Pops and over 2 million TrueBlue points. Watch out for our double-decker around Manhattan today! #PointsDontExpire”
The bus - staffed by JetBlue crew - visited the Empire State Building, Union Square, Bryant Park, Columbus Circle amongst others, distributed over 5,000 popsicles to New York residents. On the wrapping, as well as the message, was a code, which when entered online, offered each bearer anything between 200 and 20,000 jetblue points which could be used against redeeming free flights from the airline. The average points won per person was 400.
The British Airways Silent Picturehouse is a 5-screen cinematic experience where visitors can watch 5 travel-inspired films in a silent room, using a pair of headphones. Par ticipants who purchased tickets were provided a film screening and treats with a twist at their pop-up venue in the heart of London, attended by British Airways ambassadors. Returning for the second year, BA’s ‘Silent Picturehouse’ featured Skyfall, Top Gun, The Beach, Jaws and their ‘Fan’s Choice’ Slumdog Millionaire. The premise was to show films that evoked travel in different ways and by asking ticket holders to listen on wireless headphones, recreate an in-flight enter tainment experience, helping to immerse them in the movie. The event, apar t from including a seat and headphones in front of their movie, also
included treats such as hotdogs, popcorn, ice-cream, sweets and treats all included in the price of their ticket. A sneak peek of “Planes” was also exclusively shown at BA’s Silent Picturehouse Kids – the child friendly pop up cinema also in the arches on the southern bank of London, conveniently timed to coincide with the star t of children’s summer holidays. The venue also showed a selection of Disney films for children across the five screens, including; Disney-Pixar’s “Up”, “Cars 2”, Tim Bur ton’s “Alice in Wonderland”, “Oz the Great and Powerful” and “The Muppets”. The event was fully booked, so the airline added a fur ther date, meaning the event lasted a full 6 days during the last week of July.
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benchmark report
airline marketing
social
air france & klm ‘mr. miles’ For their latest social campaign, Air FranceKLM has picked its frequent flyer program, Flying Blue, as its marketing focus. The campaign is designed like a game, similar to KLM’s space flight campaign, that was launched a few months ago. A fictional person titled ‘Mr Miles’ travelled around the world from 17 to 26 June, 2013 visiting a different destination every day. The character gave clues in his Twitter account for followers to locate his location. Then using the dedicated branded web page users had to navigate the variety of pages, by picking continents, and choosing one place among the nine destinations in that continent. Every day, a user got only one chance to guess the location of Mr Miles. In the case of a user marking the wrong location on the map, the system gave three more chances as
air asia ‘high 5’ long as the user invites three friends. If a user marked the correct location of Mr Miles, then instant miles were awarded ranging between 500 and 10,000 miles. A total of three million miles were won as part of this campaign. The site is supported by a great video that was created to promote the Mr Miles campaign. The illustrations on the site by Hélène Builly combine archive images and modern graphics in an original, playful style. The game aimed to strengthen ties with programme members as well as increase Flying Blue’s reputation with the general public.
AirAsia was recently named the World’s Best Low Cost Carrier for the fifth consecutive year by Skytrax, and to celebrate the award, it launched a ‘high-five’ themed campaign with the hashtag #Hi5AirAsia to collect as many ‘high-fives’ as possible from the public throughout the region. The premise was to upload on instagram a photo of yourself giving the Air Asia crew a High-5 wearing big red foam hands or by getting one of the big red foam hands & take a picture of yourself a high-5 moment with a friend. As par t of the campaign, the high-fives were also translated into the number of total promotional seats available for the campaign, which star ted in July. Two million ‘high-fives’ were collected throughout Asia, and to give thanks to
AirAsia guests for their overwhelming suppor t towards the campaign, 2 million promotional seats were offered from a base fare of RM0.05 to all of AirAsia’s route networks. All-in-fares inclusive of taxes and fees star ted from as low as RM26.05 (one way) to domestic destinations and more; while international destinations star t from RM49.05 (one way). Siegtraund Teh, group chief commercial officer of AirAsia, said, “We are glad to have received so many high-fives from our guests throughout the region and do continue tagging us on social media with #Hi5AirAsia, especially if you’ve managed to grab any of the 2 million promo seats!”
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airline marketing
singapore airlines ‘asia destination’
virgin america ‘summer of selfies’ For the sixth straight year, Travel + Leisure readers have named Virgin America as Best Domestic Airline (US) in the World’s Best Awards. To celebrate the young domestic airline teamed up with Gogo to offer passengers free mobile internet access to the apps of Instagram, Twitter, and Vine for 15 minutes on every Virgin America flight for 4 days in early July. During the promotion, they asked travellers to have their “fifteen minutes of fame” in a bid to “show the world that we’ve got the World’s Best guests” suitably timed for the popular travelling weekend of the 4th of July. The precise idea was to ask passengers to shoot in-flight ‘selfies’ (self-portrait) on Twitter, Instagram, or Vine with the handle #VXSelfie. As a way to reward
the entrants, each day, one flyer scored a retweet to the @VirginAmerica followers, along with 10,000 Elevate points. The gallery of submitted photos was also put on their Facebook page. To suppor t their competition, a tongue-incheek viral video was created by their cabin crew to help passengers work out how best to take a ‘Selfie’ which was shown on the Virgin America blog and YouTube.
According to a study by the Content Marketing Institute, 80 percent of consumers are interested in being involved in projects with brands they love, however less than 1 out of 5 companies are actually involving consumers. Singapore Airlines has launched a consumer video contest that aims to drive brand loyalty and research into mobile app usage. The airline is inviting consumers to go to contest.flysingaporeair.com to submit their favorite things to see and do in Asia for a chance to win exclusive travel experiences. Visitors to the site are invited to help the airline create a “best-of-the-best” video of their favorite things to see and do around Asia. They can share their favorite holiday spots, activities and memories for a chance
to win. Entries are allowed once per month through Dec. 31, 2013. The grand prize is a business class trip for two to Bali, Kota Kinabalu and Singapore, including hotel accommodations by Shangri La and the Four Seasons. Each month, a winner will be selected by a panel of judges from Singapore Airlines staff, based on the aesthetic value and skill that they show. One winner will also be voted to win by the public, as the ‘people’s choice’ during the campaign The contest was created by creative agency Managed Digital, which selected SendUs a platform that alows brand to manage user-generated videos in a structural way.
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benchmark report
airline marketing
digital & mobile
lufthansa ‘ramadan rewards’ As par t of a recent movement that sees Western airlines star ting to celebrate non-Western events such as Chinese New Year, Lufthansa have targetted their diverse passenger base in a recent campaign. For Ramadan 2013, the airline has called on the public to nominate a friend or colleague who they think would love to be reunited with their family. From 25 June to 9 August, the public can nominate and vote via Lufthansa’s website. Lufthansa will provide the 10 nominees, who received the most votes, with free tickets to fly back home cour tesy of Lufthansa’s ‘Ramadan Rewards’. Carsten Schaeffer, Lufthansa Vice President, Sales and Services for Southeast Europe, Middle East and Africa, said:
boeing‘787 flight tracker program’ “The world is connected and it should be a simple thing to travel from one destination to another. But sometimes, for people who are overseas it’s not always so easy. At Lufthansa, we believe everyone should be able to spend time with the people they love, and we can help make the world a smaller, happier place. That’s why this Ramadan, Lufthansa is taking the initiative to encourage people to see and do something good for others…It is rewarding to help. So, join the campaign and play an impor tant role in suppor ting someone to reunite with their loved ones.” The 10 people with the highest number of votes will get to fly to their families via Lufthansa. The top three will fly Business Class while the remaining seven will travel Economy Class.
Aircraft manufacturer Boeing earlier this month launched the 787 Flight Tracker Program to keep track of the fleet of their new Dreamliner aircraft as they fly around the world for differing airlines. There are a couple of unique features.
are updated every 30 minutes, with data from FlightAware. The website even manages to replicate engine noise, and showcase the view from the cabin, so as to place an avid follower a vir tual ‘flight’ experience.
The first is allowing viewers to see on what airlines and what routes the 787 is currently flying. But the more unique aspect is overlaying flight status information with the application “Google Ear th”. Viewers see a 787 in the airline’s livery, flying over graphical landscape in Google Ear th, in real-time.
The 787 has had a chequered few months due to it’s continuing battle with new technology and had already carried a million passengers before it was grounded for safety reasons. After the fix, Boeing needed to showcase that all aircraft are back in the air, and passengers are flying them around the world. The 787 flight tracker program is a fun and engaging way to build back the brand trust.
Once you’re on the dedicated site, a viewer can select a specific airline flight, and click on “View in Google Ear th”. From there, they can zoom in/out to see details of where the 787 flights are. Flight details
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benchmark report
airline marketing
traditional
delta ‘cabin pressure cook off’ Delta have joined forces with American Express owned ‘Food & Wine’ magazine to source the next best chef to join the Delta culinary team. The contest, which will be called the “Cabin Pressure Cook-Off”, was announced late July and will feature four chefs cited in Food & Wine’s annual best new chefs program. They will compete in three challenges that will be filmed in New York in late July and early August, and distributed this fall by Delta and Food & Wine on their Web sites and social media channels. The challenges will be filmed as three episodes, while a fourth episode will feature the winning chef visiting Delta’s test kitchen in Atlanta. The winning chef will join Delta’s culinary team which currently consits of Michelle Bernstein of Michy’s in Miami; Michael Chiarello of Bottega in Napa Valley and Coqueta in San Francisco; and Andrea
qantas ‘the mane event’ Robinson, a master sommelier. The three help Delta create food and wine offerings for long-haul business-class passengers on select routes. Joanne Smith, Delta’s senior vice president for in-flight service, said the winning chef could design menus for business-class passengers on trans-Atlantic flights. The challenges will be covered across many other platforms, from a large section in the Food & Wine magazine itself, to Delta’s IFE system. Delta bought a total of 11 pages of advertising in six issues of Food & Wine in 2013. Ms. Smith said the contest was part of an effort by Delta to improve its in-flight dining experience for business-class passengers, who she said “spend a lot of money flying Delta around the world and expect a finedining experience.”
Microsoft search engine Bing and Qantas Airways have launched a five episode branded content series, The Mane Event, to coincide with the British and Irish Lions Rugby Tour of Australia. Bing and Qantas have searched the UK and Ireland for rugby’s ultimate suppor ters to join The British & Irish Lions on Tour to Australia this summer. Four passionate and pattriotic rugby fans from Englend, Ireland, Scotland and Wales won the price of a lifetime and the Mane Event, created by The Hallway, follows the four die-hard Lion fnas as they travel through Australia, after winning return flights from the UK with Qantas, taking on local Wallabies fans in a series of unusual challenges that test their skill, determination and pride.
Director of the series, and The Hallway’s creative par tner Simon Lee said “The Mane Event has the makings of a highly enter taining story. Whether it’s at rugby, tiddlywinks or sheep shearing, spor ts fans are inherently competitive. When you add national pride and a timeless rivalry to the equation, along with a pinch of comic tension, you’ve got some great ingredients to work with.” The Mane Event videos are being broadcast on Qantas’ in-flight enter tainment system and its website is being promoted on the MSN homepage in the UK. On YouTube, the first episode reached 60,000 views, yet subsequent ones haven’t had the same reach.
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benchmark report
airline marketing
traditional
american airlines ‘planes’
finnair ‘flight of fantasy’ Finnair’s flight attendants regularly post on the Finnair blog, one such attendant, Helena Kaartinen has posted about her recent work in India to help create a dream come true for some special underprivileged children. Ms. Kaar tinen visited the Saki Naka Pipeline in Mumbai on a visit there and quickly fell captive by the charm of the children living there. She approached Finnair’s marketing depar tment to provide a few of the kids the chance of a lifetime, by flying them to Delhi to perform in front of cameras a Bollywood dance routine. Finnair quickly jumped on the idea of the project to provide air travel, a first for all the 20 selected children, between Mumbai and Delhi and suppor t for the project, led by the flight attendant and her colleagues.
The blog post features the videos both behind the scenes, and the final video of the dance, where the children can be seen wearing the uniforms of Finnair. Whilst Finnair haven’t been the first airline to suppor t children charity work, the successful implementation of the blog and YouTube videos helps reinforce their message of charity work around the world, although posted on the company’s LinkedIn, facebook and twitter pages, the videos have only been seen by a few thousand people.
Cross-promotional ideas don’t come much better than this. The latest promotional idea between Disney and American Airlines involves the children’s film company latest 3D computer-animated movie “Planes,” which debuts in the US on August 9. The character Tripp (in the shape of a 777-300ER) wears the American Airlines’ new logo and livery. Meanwhile, American will get to show the movie in-flight a month earlier than other airlines can — one of several crosspromotional effor ts.
On American Airlines website, there is even an interactive game, which combines the characters of the film and information about the launch of the new 777-300ER, the flagship aircraft for the airline. This also includes a prize for four people to travel around the world on American Airlines. There are also a series of trailers and short films that involve both American Airlines and Planes, totalling over 150,000 views on YouTube.
Whilst this hasn’t been the first movie-airline pairing, with James Bond notoriously being partnered with British Airways until Virgin Atlantic stole this away from them a few years ago, the latest pairing of AA and Disney, has seen much more than product placement.
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airline marketing
traditional
lufthansa ‘flying spoons & tellerüberraschung’ Continuing Lufthansa’s latest adver tising campaign that has added some levity into the brand, the airline has launched it’s latest tv spot, playing on childhood memories of being fed by our parents by a ‘flying plane spoon’. It connects our infinity of food and flying, and features a variety of scenes of babies being fed by their mothers. Then we cut to an adult, with baby like features who is eating food on board a Lufthansa plane in their new business class cabin. The campaign has been pieced together to celebrate the launch of the new business class menus onboard their longhaul flights.
stereotype, one where the pilots are treated more like celebrities than the Bayern München football team and a lighter campaign based on their latest flatbed seats. Continuing their focus on the business class menu, Lufthansa also launched another supporting campaign, ‘Tellerüberraschung’ whereby they provide unsuspecting restaurant guests dishes from the business class menu, without them knowing, and then pick up the bill at the end, filmed and showcased on YouTube with 25,700 views so far.
The campaign follows other fun adver ts including one where a french passenger has a little fun about the German
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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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