benchmark report
airline marketing
experiential
cross-media
lounge dortmund
new year’s gift
TURKISH AIRLINES
Turkish Airways has just launched a new branded VIP lounge at Signal Iduna Park, home of German top soccer team Borussia Dor tmund. This follows a recent trend of airlines opening branded lounges at spor ts venues, such as Emirates and Delta ‘brand spaces ’ at Real Madrid and Chelsea FC. The 430sqm ‘Lounge Dortmund ’ can seat up to 200 of the football club’s spectator-box guests and business par tners, and has been designed to reflect the atmosphere of THY’s International CIP Lounge at Istanbul Atatürk Airpor t, featuring spanning arches and rich colour palettes. As well as comfor table seating areas, guests are provided with an array of food and drink, which include a selection of Turkish desser ts, coffees and traditional Turkish
FEBRUARY 2014 ISSUE
LUFTHANSA TURKEY
tea, served by staff wearing the Turkish Airlines cabin crew uniform, reinforcing the airline experience at the stadium. The new lounge acts as the first ‘physical’ product of THY’s par tnership with Dor tmund. Since the beginning of the current Bundesliga season, Turkish Airlines has been the Premium Airline Par tner of Borussia Dor tmund and flies the team to all international tournaments and matches. The par tnership also covers adver tising in and outside the stadium, as well as joint promotional activities and events.
Lufthansa Turkey has challenged Istanbul-based urban and guerilla marketing agency Japonlar to come up with a creative way to gather email addresses of potential airline passengers. Japonlar came up with a concept that saw the airline develop 10,000 postcards that were distributed on the streets of Istanbul to passers-by by Lufthansa pseudo-cabin crew, in return for their personal contact details. To create a point of difference in the campaign, the agency embraced the notion that less postcards were being sent compared to the past, due to the rise in social media and digital communication. To help generate desire for the postcards, Japonlar created a postcard that also turns into a balsa wood toy plane that allows people
to deliver their new year’s greetings in a different, longer lasting, and fun way. Two host and hostess teams distributed the postcards on December 21-22 at popular spots around Istanbul as a new year’s gift from Lufthansa and in total thousands of e-mail addresses were collected in return for a wooden ‘planecard’. As people were asked for their contact information, they were informed about a discount coupon for future f lights, which they could receive via a QR code on the card.
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EXPERIENTIAL SOCIAL DIGITAL TRADITIONAL
