benchmark report
airline marketing
traditional
the legend is back
snowball
AMERICAN AIRLINES
American Airlines’ latest print campaign celebrates the upgrade of the airlines’ transcontinental service, as the lucrative routes between New Jork, Los Angeles and San Francisco have become a major battlefield for US carriers vying for customers. Starring Julianna Margulies (The Good Wife) and Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother), the new advertising campaign mimics the heritage AA advertising campaigns featuring Grace Kelly and Gregory Peck , who apparently flew American a lot back in the day. Created by McCann, the American campaign is designed to remind consumers that is was AA that invented the transcontinental service back in 1953. Presented in black and white, with the only nod to colour being the airline’s new logo and tailfin, the
MARCH 2014 ISSUE
WIDERØE
styling and composition of the campaign taps into the current trend of ‘looking backwards.’ “We have such a rich heritage in the transcon market,” said Fern Fernandez, American’s CP of global marketing. “For some years we hadn’t really hadn’t invested in the right way. The crux of the campaign is that we want to remind people that we invented trans-continental service. Now we are completely reinventing and taking a different approach in this market.” Besides featuring in print, the current print adver tising campaign will also be translated to TV adver ts, following an initial midJanuary teaser commercial .
Following its successful Grandpa’s Magic Trick commercial (nearly 1.5 million views on YouTube), which was voted as one of the best commercials of 2012, this new ad from Norwegian airline Wideroe is par t touching, par t thought provoking. The 55-second spot documents a long-distance relationship in which a woman complains that her boyfriend doesn’t come to visit her often enough. Things seem to be going bad when he says “I thought about visiting you…” The woman seems ready to give up, and indeed hangs up the phone, when her boyfriend offers up a big surprise.
effor tlessness and natural joy of Holst’s previous work that made the last spot so popular. The tone of voice of the Snowball video is somewhat depressing and although it sums up what is obviously a complicated relationship in just a few careful brushstrokes – which captures the power of travel in connecting travellers with the ones they love – the video has only generated a few thousand views in a couple of months on YouTube.
Directed by Marius Holst, who was also behind ‘Grandpa’s Magic Trick’, ‘Snowball’ is a serious attempt to pull at viewers’ hear t strings but in the end lacks the
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VALENTINES SOCIAL DIGITAL TRADITIONAL
