benchmark report
airline marketing
NOVEMBER 2013 ISSUE
A monthly selection of the most innovative marketing campaigns launched by airlines around the world SimpliFlying | airlinetrends.com November 2OI3 Issue 15
benchmark report
airline marketing
welcome. Published by market research agency airlinetrends.com and aviation marketing strategy consulting firm 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 help agencies that work with airlines stay on top of the latest innovative airline marketing initiatives.
NOVEMBER 2013 ISSUE
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 connect with consumers.
social
Besides engaging their online audience via Facebook and Twitter-based campaigns, the airline industry is also busy experimenting with new social media platforms.
digital
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
experiential
cross-media
real madrid vip lounge
kids planes
EMIRATES
Airlines globally are investing in so-called ‘brand spaces ’ outside of the airport environment to help boost their exposure to potential consumers and offer additional perks to frequent flyers. These initiatives include pop-up spaces and lounges at conferences and events, but more permanent venues are becoming commonplace as well, such as Emirates aviation experience in London, Delta’s lounge at Chelsea FC Stamford Bridge , as well as other Delta Sky360 lounges at multiple sports stadiums across the US. Emirates has followed suit of its ‘sporty’ Delta counterpart by opening its own VIP Lounge at Real Madrid’s Santiago Bernabéu Stadium. The 375sqm lounge, which resembles the cabin of a Boeing 777 (that serves the Dubai-Madrid route) can
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KLM
host up to 200 guests during match days, who are invited to relax, eat and drink, or watch the action on large plasma screens. The airline has signed a five-year shirt deal with the football club and with the lounge aims to add an experiental touch to the sponsorship. The Real Madrid VIP lounge adds to Emirates portfolio of soccer sponsorships, which includes major soccer teams such as Arsenal, Paris St Germain, AC Milan and HSV in its major markets of the UK, France, Italy and Germany. Meanwhile, Gulf-based Qatar Airways is a sponsor of FC Barcelona, while Etihad supports Manchester City in efforts to reach a mass audience via the world’s most popular game.
Following its par tnership with Schiphol Airpor t to offer a select audience the chance to preview Disney’s latest f ilm ‘Planes’ in a 3D drive-in cinema at Amsterdam’s airpor t, KLM has turned to the imagination of children by offering them a once in a lifetime experience.
The airline posted a heartwarming video of the experience and the reactions of the kids on YouTube, which – within just two weeks – has already gained 2.7 million views, making it one of the most successful campaigns KLM has run on its YouTube channel.
KLM invited 300 children to watch a pre-screening of Planes onboard an MD11 aircraft parked in a hanger, where the kids were offered an immersive experience, with real-life special effects created outside the plane to coincide with the film playing onboard via the IFE screens. A host of lighting, smoke and rain effects helped bring the film to life, reinforcing the airline’s tagline ‘journeys of inspiration’.
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solo send-off
fanvan
BRITISH AIRWAYS
British Airways pride itself on its British Heritage. So when British novelist William Boyd launched his new James Bond novel ‘Solo ’ publishers HarperCollins teamed with BA to give the book a ‘Best of British’ send off. The first seven copies of ‘Solo’ were numbered 001 to 007 and signed in London’s luxury hotel The Dorchester before being transpor ted in a vintage Jensen spor tscar motorcade to Heathrow Airpor t to be flown off to destinations around the world with par tner BA. The setting of the launch mirrored the opening of the new book , where Bond, a veteran agent at 45, celebrates his bir thday with an evening of gambling, drinking and fine dining at The Dorchester. The seven copies of the book were placed in perspex briefcases
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CATHAY PACIFIC
and given the ‘Bond’ treatment by being escor ted by British Airways stewardesses to the airpor t, where they were handed over to BA captains and stored securely in flight-decks before making their way to VIPs in Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Zurich, Los Angeles, Delhi, Cape Town and Sydney. British Airways connection to James Bond has been checkered. Originally in the Bond films, British Airways was the airline of choice of fictional character James Bond. However, Virgin Atlantic took the mantle from BA when they appeared in Casino Royale in 2006. This reconnection to the franchise is a tactical move, trying to align itself with the long-lasting heritage between the two brands.
Cathay in 2012 launched a promotion called ‘Fanfares ’, in which a limited number of return economy class tickets are put on sale on a dedicated website every Tuesday morning for flights depar ting from Hong Kong. Eleven shor t- and long-haul destinations from Cathay and whollyowned regional subsidiary Dragonair are included and tickets for imminent travel, as well as more than two months in advance, are available. The general purpose of the ‘fanfares’ is to clear inventory while getting exposure in the Hong Kong market at the same time.
van to stop by striking a special ‘hail’ pose as showcased on the airline’s website (video here ). Cathay is stepping up the promotion of its Fanfares to increase its exposure at a time of increasing competition in Hong Kong for low fares because of the arrival of new LCC’s such as Hong Kong Express, Jetstar Hong Kong and Spring Airlines in the city.
In October 2013, Cathay launched the FanVan on the streets of Hong Kong to celebrate and promote the 2013 campaign of Cathay’s Fanfares. The FanVan will appear every Tuesday for four weeks and fans wishing to win a prize can signal the
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micro prix tgv
social
#racetheplane
SNCF
Besides looking at industry competitors for inspiration for their marketing campaigns, airlines can benefit as well from initiatives in related industries. In recent reports we have covered Schiphol Airport’s ‘Big Wave Goodbye ’ initiative and airport-based campaigns from consumer brands such as Heineken and DE coffee. Recently, French rail operator SNCF launched an innovative experiential campaign to promote its lowest fares. SNCF and its ad agency TBWA Paris at Paris’ Gare de Lyon train station created one of the biggest vivariums in Europe by filling a large glass tank with insects and small fare labels. Travelers then could use a joystick to control microscopes inside the tank and get a closeup of the bugs, some of them crawling over the tiny price tags.
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BRITISH AIRWAYS
To support the real-life vivarium, a beautiful online video has been created, whereby the TGV micro-prices have filmed in a microscopic world surrounded by more than 500 insects, producing surprising images.
In September, British Airways invited Twitter users to #RaceThePlane in a digital competition to mark the arrival of its Dreamliner fleet. The aim of the campaign was to pit a virtual ‘Tweetliner’ plane (‘powered’ by tweets) against a real Dreamliner flight from London to Toronto. Participants in the campaign had to tweet or retweet a message with #RaceThePlane in a 7.5 hour window (the actual flying time of the flight) in order to win one of five ticket pairs to Toronto, one of BA’s 787 destinations. The more tweets mentioning the hashtag, the faster the virtual plane flew and progress of these races could be tracked on a dedicated website.
tweets over the peak time between 12pm and 4pm. A quarter of tweets about the Dreamliner were positive and a fifth mentioned the word ‘love’. The race was replayed 5 days later , on a flight between London and Los Angeles to support BA’s recent A380 launch to Los Angeles with contestants being able to win tickets to the West Coast metropolis. Both races were won by the ‘Tweetliner’ , and according to social analytics company Topsy, there were over 30,000 tweets with the #RaceThePlane hashtag in 30 days.
According to Carat , the first #RaceThePlane race reached approximately 1.9 million Twitter users and pulled in 6,000
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30 days of friendly
#tellMOL #grillMOL
UNITED
To celebrate and promote United’s new brand campaign ‘Flyer Friendly ’, the airline between September 27th and October 26th offered its social media followers the chance to win daily prizes including Economy Plus seats, MileagePlus miles and domestic roundtrip tickets during a ‘30 Days of Friendly ’ ‘random acts of kindness’ initiative. To kick off the month-long event, on the first day of the competition United offered a tour of the SFO Maintenance Centre, which could be won by answering a simple question on its social media channels. The giveaway campaign ran on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, although all winners were announced on Twitter. The ‘generosity’ competition is part of United’s much larger ‘Fly the Friendly
NOVEMBER 2013 ISSUE
RYANAIR
Skies ’ campaign (featured in the October edition of this repor t), which includes radio, magazine, newspaper, outof-home and digital adver tising. The continuously expanding campaign also includes two videos recently launched on YouTube, showcasing the needs and experiences of the airline’s travelers, from rock stars to entrepreneurs .
Ryanair – Europe’s largest carrier and the world’s 2nd largest LCC (after Southwest) in terms of passengers carried – is perhaps one of the most disliked at the same time, with most comments on social media focussing on the negatives rather than the positives of the airline. These comments have been fueled and cour ted by outspoken CEO Michael O’Leary (MOL in shor t), who has constantly belittled it’s travelers, even publicly calling them stupid . Recently however, O’Leary announced a change in his attitude (possibly forced by his board), saying he wanted to change the airline’s brash nature and is welcoming input from passengers to help change the carrier and improve its service offering. Changes are already underway, including more relaxed bag and boarding pass re-
issue policies, while a new website is also being developed. At the star t of October an online suggestion platform and a twitter feed, using the tag #TellMOL , were launched to allow the public to send suggestions to the airline’s CEO and open a dialogue. To suppor t this campaign, Ryanair on 22nd October hosted a live twitter conversation with O’Leary using the tag #GrillMOL on its month-old twitter feed. Sadly, the twitter conversation didn’t go fully to plan, as it star ted at the wrong time and resulted in several remarks coming from the CEO that were inappropriate .
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digital
old school safety
#vxsafetydance
AIR NEW ZEALAND
Air New Zealand is no stranger to producing safety videos – in fact the airline has pioneered the use of safety videos as online marketing campaign – with very successful results. Past Air New Zealand safety video hits include the Hobbitthemed ‘An Unexpected Briefing’ (which has now topped over 11 million views), ‘Fit to Fly’ starring fitness guru Richard Simmons, and more recently ‘The Bear Essentials’ featuring renowned television adventurer Bear Grylls. ANZ’s latest safety video/commercial is called ‘Safety Old School Style ’ and features America’s sweethear t comedienne and ‘Golden Girl’ Betty White plus a cast of golden oldies. Filmed entirely outside of New Zealand, the video, which acts as a pseudo-
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VIRGIN AMERICA
infomercial promoting the activities of the ficitional care home does hint at promoting their Nor th American destination, Los Angeles. “Air New Zealand’s brand is all about liberating from the ordinary and our safety videos have proven a great way to showcase our unique personality to audiences of all ages around the world. In Betty we found the perfect par tner – she is renowned for being a little bit cheeky and with a career spanning 74 years, who better to learn survival tips from than the award-winning show business veteran?” says ANZ Head of Global Brand Development Jodi Williams. The video has already amassed just shy of 2 million views on YouTube in two weeks.
Safety videos commonly go viral when they offer something beyond the norm. Air New Zealand continues to come up with great themed videos, while Delta launches funny ‘holiday safety videos ’ every year, while Virgin’s group of airlines offer ‘cool’ animated safey messages, including Virgin America’s inaugural safety video , launched in 2009. On October 29th, Virgin America launched a brand new video to be shown onboard, which has a unique twist. The full safety message has been put to a song and the instructions are danced through the 5-minute soundtrack. Filmed by director Jon Chu (who also shot Justin Bieber’s ‘Never Say Never’ concer t f ilm), it stars a varied cast that includes American Idol contestants and Olympic champions.
The tongue-in-cheek video features 14 different dance styles and took 26 hours to f ilm on set, using a total of 36 dancers. To help promote the video through social media channels, the airline is auditioning for future safety videos from it’s followers, by asking potential stars to send in a 15-second instagram video of their moves using the tag #VXsafetydance . In the f irst 24 hours after the upload on YouTube, the safety video has generated nearly 500,000 views.
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tripadvisor travel photo wall
my dream catcher KLM
KLM has followed suit of many other airlines – including Delta’s iPad app and BA’s Inspiration app – by creating an inspirational app to help promote trips around its network. KLM’s app is called MyDreamCatcher and aims to provide specifical ‘local knowledge’ about destinations. How it works (video ): When a user enters the destination and travel dates into the app, a list of recommendations is shown that includes shopping, restaurants, bars, as well as events that are taking place during the selected dates. The key here is that the tool takes time into consideration for service recommendations. When user selects one of the recommended service (for example, a
NOVEMBER 2013 ISSUE
TURKISH AIRLINES
hotel) to view more details, the application displays the hotel price range (pulled from TripAdvisor), reviews from Yelp/ Google+/TripAdvisor, video of the hotel from YouTube, number of Facebook likes for the hotel’s page, number of checkins for the hotel in Foursquare, and location of the hotel in Google map. And, for other service recommendations in sections like Enter tainment, Restaurants, Bars, and Shopping, the application retrieves various other data from above 12 sites.
At the end of October, Turkish Airlines par tnered with TripAdvisor – the largest travel community in the world – to launch its ‘Ultimate Travel Photo Wall ’. The eight-week campaign on the behemoth travel site will showcase a collection of ‘inspirational’ traveler photos. TripAdvisor has pre-selected some of the most impressive images from the more than 14 million candid traveler photos uploaded to the site, and has sor ted them into eight categories reflecting popular photo themes.
Interestingly, users will not be able to book any of the recommended items as all content displayed in the app is readonly. The ‘curated’ itinerary can then be displayed on a map for use on a smar tphone, shared with friends via social media, or it can be printed out.
Until December 17th, visitors to TripAdvisor can vote for their favorite photos and are also encouraged to upload photos of their own. The par tnership with Turkish Airlines allows TripAdvisor to give away a pair of roundtrip tickets each week to any destination the airline serves. Visitors may vote daily for a new chance to win
each week. Online engagement is key here, once travelers vote on their favorite photos, they can share them with friends and followers on social channels. Turkish Airlines’ par tnership has included placing an icon on any of the destinations featured in the photo wall that the airline flies to, so as to adver tise its wide network, along with suppor ting ‘Destination of the Day’ adver ts and traditional banner adver tising for its website and Facebook page. Targeting TripAdvisor’s 260 million unique monthly visitors (in June 2013), the aim is to highlight the trip experiences of contributors across the globe and use these user-generated content to inspire visitors to visit a new (Turkish Airlines) destination.
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traditional
are you klaus-heidi?
today. tomorrow.
LUFTHANSA
Lufthansa’s latest campaign is created by DDB Stockholm – the same agency that came up with Lufthansa’s ‘Gallery Stockholm Berlin ’ online campaign (covered in the May edition of this report) – and is called Klaus-Heidi and aptly so. The simple premise of the campaign, which is aimed at the Swedish market, is to challenge individuals to change their name to KlausHeidi in order to get the chance to start a new life in Berlin, complete with a paid-for apartment and language lessons for a year. The competition is based on the fact that Sweden is one of the countries where citizens change their name most often, and Berlin is on the rise as a destination among Swedes. In three weeks, this very specific and quirky campaign has attracted 45,000 views on YouTube , which considering the niche market, is a fairly high number. The
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BRITISH AIRWAYS
competition runs from 11th October to 28th November and is open to Swedish citizens only. Rather than accepting entries from a wealth of Klaus-Heidi’s, the prize is awarded on a first come, first serve basis, with the first entrant to successfully prove their name change, winning the full ‘Berlin’ package. The competition has it’s own stand-alone website which is advertised on the Swedish homepage of Lufthansa, and includes a link to the official forms to change one’s name, as well as a link to upload the proof of the new name. For those a little more timid, Lufthansa also gives SEK500 (EUR60, USD80) discounts to people who have changed their name to Klaus-Heidi on Facebook, and a SEK200 fare discount to anyone else who visits the website as an encouragement to promote the competition through twitter and Facebook, using the hashtag #klausheidi .
BA’s long-serving creative agency BBH London was commissioned to develop a new major adver tising campaign that builds on the premise of BA’s successful ‘To Fly. To Serve. ’ positioning. The airline’s latest TV commercial combines both the technological advancements of the airline and its attention to detail. The motto for these adver ts, which also includes a print campaign, now runs ‘To Fly. To Serve. Today. Tomorrow.’ Featuring real BA staff, the campaign showcases the diversity of BA’s latest technological developments, from the new Boeing 787 and the Airbus A380 , its new electronic bag tags, to its slightly older Heathrow Terminal 5 . The adver t’s marketing message, shot both in ‘micro and macro’ footage (from fingerprints to satellite imagery), is tied together
by the repeating image of their BA ‘To Fly. To Serve’ crest being stitched into a piece of uniform. The overall aim is to show how every moment of the journey is crafted and thought-through by the airline. Comments Abigail Comber, marketing lead at BA, “People seem to relate to the emotion of flying and airports and this is something that comes across in this latest advert. There’s also a nice nod to our legacy in aviation, while showing our innovation with new aircraft too.” The 2-month UK-based campaign uses TV, cinema, press, digital, outdoor media and social media (this month’s report also features BA ‘Tweetliner’ initiative that accompanied its Today.Tomorrow campaign).
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common sense airline NORWEGIAN
Oslo-based Norwegian, which is expanding rapidly across Europe with both shor t- and long-haul f lights, has launched a TV and cinema-based campaign in Finland, an impor tant market for the airline. Created by adver tising agency 358 Helsinki and launched in early September, the 3-piece ad campaign jokingly plays with perceptions about lowcost air travel in the market, with the aim to show how Norwegian’s ‘hybrid LCC’ positioning differs from its competitors. Interestingly, the airline does not pick upon a par ticular competitor, but highlights the shor tfalls of both legacy carriers and LCCs. The commercials are numbered ‘16 ’ (video ), ‘18’ (video ) and ‘19’ (video ), and the ‘anecdotal’ numbering
NOVEMBER 2013 ISSUE
gives the impression of a much larger list (which is still incomplete on the suppor ting campaign website ). Subject matters include ‘flights direct to main airpor ts, rather than remote airpor ts’, ‘paying only for what you need’, and ‘paying only for the luggage you take with you’. Norwegian is known for simple and playful adver tising campaigns such as billboards that double as rain meters (video ), an Internet-powered sun generator (video ) and placing branded sandboxes (with sand flown in from more sunny destinations) during the winter season which citizens could use to clear the snow.
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benchmark report
A monthly selection of the most innovative marketing campaigns launched by airlines around the world
airline marketing benchmark report rlin ai e marketing
SimpliFlying | airlinetrends.com of the most A monthly selection August 2013 campaigns innovative marketing around the world launched by airlines
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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