Air New Zealand - Just Another Day In Middle-Earth

Air New Zealand - Just Another Day In Middle-Earth

Air New Zealand has benefitted massively from its connection to the ‘Lord of the Rings’ franchise in the past years, producing a wealth of viral and safety videos, with even film director Peter Jackson having a cameo in one of the previous films.

Tourism New Zealand figures from last year’s marketing activity around The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey show that 82 percent of international survey respondents stated the campaign increased their interest in New Zealand, with 8.5 percent of international visitors to New Zealand during January-March this year said The Hobbit Trilogy was a factor in stimulating their interest in New Zealand and one percent said it was the most important factor.

In anticipation of the upcoming release this December of the latest The Hobbit episode - The Desolation of Smaug - ANZ released a new video titled ‘Just Another Day In Middle-Earth ’. The video, which got nearly 200,000 views on the first day it was put on YouTube, features real-life ANZ staff and showcases a ‘behind the scenes’ of the airline, but with the staff slowly being revealed as elves, dwarves and other fantastical creatures from the Tolkien world.

ANZ’s new video also features Kiwi Dean O’Gorman, who plays dwarf Fili in the movie, and the voice of Sylvester McCoy, a.ka. Radagast the Brown in The Hobbit Trilogy. The 2:30 min YouTube video, which so far has generated over 1.5 million views, is the first part of a broader marketing campaign by ANZ that will be launched in the coming weeks.