benchmark report
airline marketing
JULY 2014 ISSUE
A monthly selection of the most innovative marketing campaigns launched by airlines around the world SimpliFlying | airlinetrends.com July 2OI4 Issue 23
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.
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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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best airline campaigns CANNES LIONS 2014
The annual Cannes Lions awards recently took place in France’s prominent southern destination. Among the winners were several airlines for their creative marketing campaigns. A prestigious Grand Prix was awarded to British Airways’ ’Magic of Flying/Look Up’ campaign (video) , which was featured in the December 2013 edition of this repor t), and the campaign also received Gold prizes in the cyber, media, outdoor, and several other categories, making it the most successful campaign of any airline to date. According to video that BA submitted to the Cannes competition, the campaign
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earned BA 75,000+ unique visits to the campaign website, over 1 million views on YouTube and had a global reach of over 350 million.
Aerolineas Argentinas, meanwhile, walked away with Silver in the Film category for its three-par t Landing -, Night Flight - Take Off campaign.
In the Promo & Activation category, Transavia France’s eBay campaign, which allowed the public to trade old goods for tickets, snagged the Gold award. The campaign gained 330 million media impressions, 54 percent more searches for Transavia on Google, and 45 percent more bookings. Transavia France also picked up a Silver award in the same category for its ‘Takeoff’ campaign, which received 1.8 million views on Youtube.
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cross-media
next stop nyc
experiential
fanhansa LUFTHANSA
In light of the World Cup, Lufthansa changed the name on eight of its aircrafts from Lufthansa to Fanhansa , which is the first time Lufthansa has ever changed its iconic lettering on its aircraft since the airline began operating nearly 60 years ago. And, to bring attention to the airline’s makeover, surprise activities and ticket giveaways took place at check-in and gate areas at Frankfurt Airport as well as on Lufthansa flights to Brazil. In total, 50 trips to Brazil were given away by Lufthansa, and all giveaways were candid. On one flight, 20 tickets were given away in the head rests of passengers’ seats. Disguised in the form of soccer jerseys, passengers who found a black and red jersey won a ticket to Brazil (video) .
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VIRGIN ATLANTIC
At the airport, the world foosball champ of her age category was waiting to challenge travellers to a game for a chance to win tickets to Brazil, too (video) , while selected passengers arriving at Frankfurt Airport who could cope with six hours of non-stop samba music (video) , would win a ticket as well. And on flight LH500 to Rio de Janeiro, 352 passengers were treated to a Caipirinha (Brazils national cocktail) party at 39 0000 feet and a party package with fan gear for the World Cup games. The Fanhansa YouTube videos have each reached thousands of views, with the kick-off video of hidden jerseys in head rests being the most popular video of the campaign, with over 135 000 views.
In April, KLM and Heineken celebrated Netherlands King’s Day by surprising ten lucky New Yorkers on the streets of the city with a trip to Amsterdam (video) . In the same fashion, celebrating its 30th anniversary, on June 20th Virgin Atlantic sent a fleet of traditional New York yellow cabs around London who would pick up passers by at secret locations across the city. Clues to their locations were posted on Twitter and Facebook.
The campaign was announced on Virgin’s social media channels to alert Londoners of the contest three days before it kicked off. Containing the hashtag #nextstopNYC, the announcements and location hints were retweeted hundreds of times.
When Londoners spotted the taxis they flagged them down in NYC fashion to be whisked away to the airport and flown to New York for the weekend. There were 30 pairs of tickets up for grabs and winners stayed at the Hilton DoubleTree hotel in New York (video) .
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#flightyes14
children’s day
THOMAS COOK
With the tag line ‘Inspiring personal journeys,’ Thomas Cook’s recent video contest did just that. On Valentine’s Day, the airline on its Facebook page asked fans a question: “What if you could marry your love on a plane, would you do it?” The question was the introduction to a video contest that received 25 entries and one lucky winner, Alexander Serruys. The contest prize was an inf light wedding and honeymoon in Rhodes, cour tesy of Thomas Cook. The twist, however, was that Alexander had not yet proposed to his girlfriend, Marieke van de Wal. The groom conspired with the bride’s sister to plan the inf light wedding—from choosing a dress, to staging a faux ‘gals only’ vacation—all details were taken care
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AEROFLOT
of pre-f light. Friends and family hid on board the f light in the back of the plane, while Marieke and her sister boarded and sat at the front of the plane. While soaring at 30 000 feet, Alexander walked down the aisle, got down on his knee, and proposed to Marieke. They were married then and there. The conspiracy, the proposal, and the wedding, were all documented and shared on YouTube , receiving over one million views since it was published on June 1st.
To strike a chord with travellers, passengers, and the public, Aerof lot celebrated International Children’s Day in a creative way . On June 1st, young passengers took par t in a painting exhibit aboard 21 long-haul f lights headed for different directions around the world. The kids were given some time to create their pictures using painting set from Aerof lot amenity kits for children. All of the passengers were involved in the action: the kids were trying hard to make a nice picture with their parents ready to help, others were watching the process and eager to see the results. Having f inished the task, the little ar tists proudly presented their masterpieces to the whole aircraft and were rewarded with passengers admiration and a memorable
gift from Aerof lot – a funny inf latable plane. “For kids it was a good chance to express their impressions of the journey with Aerof lot and for us – to let them feel our care and love. The festive atmosphere made the f light unforgettable. It was a truly touching moment to see the kids being the heroes of the day!” reads an Aerof lot statement. During the f irst half of June, Aerof lot also organized a ‘Colors of the Ear th and Sky’ painting contest on social media. Out of 400 entries, 20 winners were chosen, who were awarded with a visit to Aerof lot’s main off ice in the center of Moscow and their paintings might be used in design of fur ther amenity kits and other services for young passengers on board.
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london ready
the mint room
AIR NEW ZEALAND
JETBLUE
To promote its new ‘Mint’ Business Class cabin - which aims to change the perception of the front-of-plane cabin from a old-fashioned, stuffy space to a chic and fresh one - in a “JetBlue way,” the airline hosted a garden party in Los Angeles to promote its new premium cabin. The new seats as well as the food and beverage options of the new Mint class was available for prospective customers to experience in the so-called ‘Mint Room’ at the Grove restaurant in L.A. between June 13 and 15. At the event, the public learned everything about the new cabin and guests were encouraged to take a selfie while sitting in the seats, post it on their social media channels and include the hashtag #JBSeatSelfie for a chance to win a flight in the Mint cabin.
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Flight attendants in uniform were among the crowd, serving tapas-style New York City plates provided by Saxon + Parole - also offered in the cabin - to guests. To wrap up the night a private roof-top show was given by Grammy winner, Gary Clark Jr.
Between June 5 and 14, Air New Zealand sent a touring truck across southern California that emulated the interior of its aircraft. The truck featured the airline’s Economy Skycouch , which is a row of three seats that make like a couch and its Premium Economy Spaceseat .
Currently, the Mint cabin is only available on the LAX-JFK transcontinental route and in October it will be extended to the SFO-JFK route.
The tour stopped in Long Beach and Santa Monica and was meant to provide a taste of the Los Angeles to London experience on board Air New Zealand.
Studios Hollywood, it was also filmed on the set of Extra with host, Mario Lopez, which provided for millions of views on television. Air New Zealand also ran a promotional offer of $978 USD round trip from LAX to London.
Fans and followers were asked to share their photos via Twitter , Facebook - accomanied by the , and Instagram hashtag #AirNZLondon - whenever they spotted the truck for their chance to win prizes. Registered attendees also had a chance to win a pair of round trip tickets to London. While the truck visited Universal
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pandamonium
#instameet k0001
CATHAY PACIFIC
Following Virgin Atlantic’s alignment with the ‘artsy’ annual Faberge NYC Big Egg Hunt (featured in the April edition of this report), Cathay Pacific collaborated with French artist Paulo Grangeon to bring his project – the creation of 1600 paper mache pandas (the exact number of pandas left on our planet) around the world by plane. The pandas have been made entirely of recycled materials by the artist in 2008 in order to raise awareness of conservation and sustainability for the World Wildlife Fund. This June, Cathay Pacific and governmentsupoorted creative institute PMQ , worked together to help the pandas embark on a worldwide tour, stopping for pop-up exhibitions in France, the Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany. Once arriving at their final destination, Hong
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TURKISH AIRLINES
Kong, the pandas were placed in 10 public locations such as Hong Kong Airport, Tsim Sha Tsui harbour front, and Victoria Park, as a pop-exhibit for everyone to see. As part of the exhibition the pandas also made their way onto a Cathay Pacific B777300ER aircraft, where they were staged on each seat in the cabin with flight attendants ‘serving’ them drinks. The pandas then ‘decended’ onto the tarmac (images of the event here) . Published in early June by Cathay Pacific on YouTube, the video of the art event has received over 26 000 views so far.
Five internationally recognized and inf luential Instagram users were invited to Istanbul cour tesy of Turkish Airlines to photograph the city from eleven different vantage points. The Instagrammers who took par t in the #InstaMeetTK0001 were: Liz Eswein from New York City with 1.2 million followers ; Pei Ketron based in San Francisco with 800k followers ; Vutheara Kham from Paris with 650k followers ; Eelco Roos from the Netherlands with over 435k followers ; and Hiroaki Fukuda from Tokyo with over 240k followers. As TripAdvisor named Istanbul the “Most Popular Travel Destination of 2014,” Turkish Airlines believed the project would provide a distinct point of view for Istanbul’s popular sites and places and the gathering was aptly known as
#InstaMeetTK0001
.
The result was nearly 60 photos of Istanbul on f ive Instagram accounts, each of which are followed by 3.2 million users collectively. As the world famous Instagrammers updated their feed with the hashtag #InstaMeetTK0001, they also made mention of Turkish Airlines, all the while receiving over 10 thousand ‘likes’ on their photographs of Istanbul. For example, one post by Hiroaki Fukuda, which received 12 thousand likes, reads this in the caption: Istanbul Classic // #Instameettk0001 @TurkishAirlines . Another post , from Liz Eswein - which received 19.9 thousand likes - reads: I could sit and stare at the ceiling of the Blue Mosque all day. #instameettk0001 #nycgoestoistanbul @turkishairlines.
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#finnairtweets
flightball
FINNAIR
This June, Finnair launched a companywide initiative that aims to help the airline become “the most Tweeted airline,” as Finnair puts it. Stretching beyond the centralized presence on Twitter by the Finnair social media team, employees are encouraged to use their personal Twitter accounts to tell tales of their life as a staff member at Finnair. The move is a potentially risky one, such as the possibility an employee’s Twitter message isn’t quite in line with what the airline would want to disseminate. But Finnair Social Media Manager Aku Varamäki is conf ident though, saying that “A major par t of this is that you have to trust employees. We trust our employees with a lot of key operations responsibilities. If we can trust them to f ly planes, then we can trust them on Twitter.”
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BRUSSELS AIRLINES
The Twitter initiative is entirely voluntary, but Finnair hopes to become the airline with the most number of employees using the social media platform. The project kicked off with a day of lectures and training sessions, and the star of the inaugural tutorials was Arman Alizad , a popular Finnish TV personality and avid Twitter user and marketer with over 65k followers. Finnair will train 200 employees over 20 training sessions dedicated to social media marketing. Finnair currently has four Twitter handles, each for a specif ic purpose: main account , customer service , news and https://twitter.com/FinnairJapan (Japanese market). The airline’s main Twitter handle also lists all employees who are tweeting .
In early June, Brussels Airlines f lew the Belgian national soccer team (the Red Devils) to São Paulo for the 2014 World Cup. For this f light ‘SN2014’, Brussels Airlines painted one of its A330s in the Belgian Red Devils colours. Adding to the soccer theme, the aisle was lined with turf and the door panels separating Business Class from economy had life size action photos of Red Devils players (images here ). Brussels Airlines also came up with an original way to offer the public the chance to win a ‘fan f light package’ , called Flight Ball . Flightball works like a real football f ield except that players are replaced by planes f lying in real-time over Begian airspace. To monitor the aircrafts, Brussels Airlines par tnered with aircraft tracking provider Casper for the provision of real-time data,
which turned actual airplanes into the vir tual players in the game. To par ticipate in the ‘aircraft soccer game’, players had to log in to the Flight Ball website and were assigned an arbitrary opponent. They then added a vir tual balloon, placed one goal post at the Nor th Sea and another one in the Ardennes region of Belgium. The planes f lying above Belgium at the time of the game would then play the vir tual soccer game and the winner had to answer the contest question. Those answering the question correctly had the chance to be invited for the Flight Ball f inal. The f inal was played on June 10 at the headquar ters of Brussels Airlines — after which the winner directly boarded the same f light to Brazil as the Red Devils.
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destination unknown
#llevamoslailusión
AMSTERDAM SCHIPHOL AIRPORT
Every now and then we feature an innovative campaign launched by an airpor t or high-speed rail provider which can provide inspiration for airline campaigns as well.
IBERIA
management system. As the images rotate, the four-minute time limit decreases. Hints such as airline, flight duration, and local time can assist in identifying the location, but also deduct time from the clock, adding a layer of difficulty to the game.
Launched in May of this year, Amsterdam Schiphol Airpor t’s ‘Destination Unknown’ aims to promote the large number of destinations that can be flown directly from the airpor t. Pulling real time Instagram content from around the world, the highly visual game – which can be played online or via a moble app – challenges players to guess at which one of Schiphol more than 300 flight destinations the photo’s are taken.
The style of user-generated imagery also allows game players to see each locale through the eyes of travelers, which led some marketing exper ts to suggest that future elements of the game could include strategic par tnerships with airlines with major hubs at Schiphol Airpor t (e.g. KLM), to facilitate lead-generation of flight search to those destinations.
Once the user begins the game, they’re prompted with a series of location-based Instagram images, which are sourced using hashtags from a custom built content
Following the game, users are prompted to submit their score into the contest, subscribe to the airpor t’s newsletter, or play again.
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Also in the World Cup spirit, Spanish flag carrier Iberia ‘hacked’ several Google Glass devices to allow them to stream video in realtime and report from the flight that brought the Spanish soccer team to Brazil.
copilot, as well as Iberia’s ‘online community manager. The intitiative resulted in more than 30 000 visits to the video microsite .
Working with Spanish IT provider Droiders and using software from Streye Iberia transfered the videos via inflight wifi during the flight so that fans only had to wait a few minutes to see updates from onboard the flight. A total of 9 short videos have been recorded and uploaded on a microsite and on Iberia’s social media platforms using the hash tag #llevamoslailusión (“We Bring Excitement.”) All videos were shot by Iberia cabin crew, ranging from the purser to the pilot and the
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traditional
wearable hackathon
traditional
fans to stars
AMERICAN AIRLINES
Recognizing it is better to team up with the creative and technology classes to co-create new applications as technology is evolving at a rapid pace, American Airlines has partnered with innovation platform Wearable World to organize the Wearable Hackaton event , which saw 200 creative techies make their way to San Francisco on June 6 and 7 to work directly with American’s development team, hardware and API partners to create the next app for wearable devices such as smart watches and interactive glasses, for trial on American Airlines. Partners in the Wearable Hackaton include IBM, AT&T, Pebble, Gogo, The Weather Channel, MasterCard, Citibank, Nod Labs, Plantronics, Deloitte, and San Francisco International Airport. In the first round, which took place on June 6th
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and 7th, participating teams spent 24 hours designing, prototyping, coding, and testing their applications. Expert mentors, sponsors, and API providers helped teams fine-tune and code their ideas throughout the event. Judges then rated team pitches and selected five teams to advance to round two. The winners of round one now have 30 days to finish their projects before meeting with American Airlines customers and employees at San Francisco Airport. Two members from each team will also board AA’s new transcontinental A321 service to New York on July 11th to test their app using in-air WiFi while communicating with team members at SFO airport. Upon landing, American’s top customers will participate in deciding the winner.
Soccer’s huge popularity in much of the world has made it a magnet for airlines looking to raise their profile. Over the last few years, airlines from the Gulf Region, in particular, have been using using soccer to build their brand names and reach a broad audience. Emirates has been sponsoring major soccer teams such as Real Madrid, Arsenal, Paris St Germain, AC Milan and HSV, while Etihad has been the main sponsor to Manchester City since 2009 and Qatar Airways shows up on the jerseys of FC Barcelona.
Aiming to visualize the connection with Borussia Dortmund, Turkish Airlines’ new commercial will star a member of the general public. In June, the airline launched a contest, titled “Turkish Airlines is looking for the star of its next commercial!” which invites fans of the soccer team to apply online on a the campaign website and describe why they should be chosen to become their next star. The lucky winner then will become the face of Turkish Airlines and will play alongside a Borussia Dortmund player in the commercial.
Turkish Airlines, meanwhile, is the ‘Premium Airline Partner’ of Borussia Dortmund and for example flies the team to all international tournaments and matches. The airline has also opened a branded lounge at Dortmund’ Signal Iduna Park stadium.
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about us.
Pricing SimpliFlying is a global consultancy that believes in thinking differently about aviation marketing. Having worked with over 50 airlines and airports around the world, it has presences in Singapore, UK, Spain, Canada and India. Today, SimpliFlying advises airlines and airports on customer engagement strategy, achieving aviation business goals by harnessing the latest innovations in the social media space. The firm also conducts MasterClasses to train and develop airline and airport teams to become self-sufficient in executing measurable and rewarding social campaigns.
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SimpliFlying’s growing list of clients includes Lufthansa, Emirates, Toronto Pearson Airpor t, Halifax International, KLIA, Jet Airways, LAN Airlines, airBaltic, Airbus and Bombardier. Get in touch at engage@simpliflying. com or visit www.simpliflying.com.
Airlinetrends.com is an independent industry and consumer trends research agency that monitors the global aviation industry for commercial innovations in response to changing consumer behavior. Airlinetrends.com repor ts its f indings in a free monthly email newsletter as well as in paid trend repor ts and corporate trend sessions. Get in touch at info@airlinetrends.com or visit www.airlinetrends.com.
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