benchmark report
airline marketing
NOVEMBER 2014 ISSUE
A monthly selection of the most innovative marketing campaigns launched by airlines around the world SimpliFlying | airlinetrends.com November 2OI4
Issue 27
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 2014 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.
tv, print, ooh
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
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cross-media
uber surprise stopovers
experiential
#tasteofamerica LUFTHANSA USA
Earlier this year, Lufthansa introduced regionally-inspired menus in Business and First on outbound flights from the USA, saying it aims to offer passengers a ‘Taste of America’ by featuring local culinary traditions and ingredients from across the U.S. To promote the new regional menus, the airline and its catering subsidiary LSG Sky Chefs toured six US cities between October 7th and 21st with a food truck. During the tour, LSG Chefs demonstrated how locally sourced ingredients are used in preparing the on-board meals and offered the public the chance to sample dishes served onboard such as Pumpkin Ravioli, Ancho Chili Dusted Beef Filet or Soda Pop Braised Short Ribs. Alison Russo, Manager Social Media Marketing, Lufthansa USA commented on the campaign: “The popularity of food trucks in the U.S. allowed us to take the experience
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ICELANDAIR
on the road to reach a large number of people.” The #TasteOfAmerica tour visited New York City , Charlotte , Miami , Atlanta, Dallas, and Los Angeles. Those interested could follow @Lufthansa_ USA on Twitter for times and locations. Images and video of the tour here and here . As part of the tour, Lufthansa USA also held a contest that awarded the winner two Business Class tickets to Europe. Participants could enter by spotting the food truck in their city, take a photo or short video of it, and share it with Lufthansa USA via Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #tasteofamerica.
In the past months, several airlines have partnered with hip taxi application Uber to jointly promote new flight destinations or new cities where Uber was launching, by rewarding unexpected flyers with a free ride to or from the airport. For example, Virgin America in mid-October marked its first flight from Dallas Love Field with the ‘Ultimate Uber Ride,” which saw a ‘moodlit’ Uber vehicle that resembled the airline’s signature moodlighting, hit the streets of Dallas. Locals who caught a ride in the Virgin America-branded taxi scored an invitation to the airline’s launch party. Another generous campaign that jumped onto the Uber bandwagon was Icelandair’s ‘Uber Surprise Stopovers’ event in Boston on October 16. As part of Icelandair’s current #MyStopover
campaign (reported in last month’s edition), a fleet of 30 Uber SUVs toured the streets of Boston offering free rides to passengers who happened to book the taxi via the Uber app. Once inside, passengers were greeted by Icelandair pillows and blankets, bottles of Icelandic Glacial, skin care products from Blue Lagoon, and enchanting Icelandic music in order to provide a comfortable ‘in-flight’ experience for passengers. In addition, a specially designated Icelandair UberSUV with an Icelandair flight attendant surprised 22 lucky riders with roundtrip tickets to any Icelandair destination in Europe of their choice, which ofcourse would include an Iceland stopover (heartwarming video here ). Icelandair says it’s planning to launch Uber Surprise Stopovers in other U.S. cities as well.
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hollywood, without the drama
#shareacokecanada
DELTA
To promote the star t of its new services between London Heathrow and Los Angeles at the end of October, Delta held a ‘Hollywood. Without The Drama’ campaign, that saw the airline roll out the red carpet to showcase its onboard products and services at a speciallyconstructed pavilion at Jubilee Plaza, outside Canary Wharf Station. A giant screen also highlighted some of the 250 movies on-board Delta f lights through a series of vignettes depicting popular f ilm scenes. The promotion was complemented by a radio campaign on Capital FM and Hear t, as well as a branded Delta Hummer visiting London railway stations, drama schools and Heathrow Airpor t. “London is a key market for Delta and activations such as this Hollywood theme help to bring to life the Delta f light
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WESTJET X COCA COLA
experience and popular destinations we serve with both corporate and leisure travellers,” said Frank Jahangir, Delta’s VP of Sales EMEA. “We have invested heavily in our on-board products, including our in-f light enter tainment and fully f latbed seats in the premium cabin. This promotion allows us to communicate these improvements in a fun and creative way.” Visitors also had the chance to win a money-can’t-buy screen test with the Dark Knight Rises casting director through a dedicated week-long self ie competition by uploading a photo or video taken at the Delta Pavilion to Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #DeltaMovieStar . 203 people par ticipated in the contest and 2,025 photos in total were posted on social media.
‘Share A Coke’ is Coca Cola’s global brand campaign that is based on the idea to get consumers buy and share personalized bottles and cans. In mid-September, Canadian LCC WestJet par tnered with Coca-Cola to take the campaign to the skies. On a September 18 f light from Calgary to Halifax, using a special vending machine set up at the depar ture gate, passengers were given the oppor tunity to create customized cans of Coke to share with whoever they were meeting at the other end of their f light. Fur thermore, by scanning the barcodes on the cans, passengers could also win prizes such as free f lights and upgrades to ‘plus’ seats. Once passengers boarded the plane, they found a personalized can with their own name on it waiting for them at their seat. Then, out their window, they saw WestJet
staffers waving to them from the tarmac. The wave-off has long been a WestJet traditional, but this time staffers held a sign in the shape of a Coke can with the name of each guest. Video of the event here . As par t of the par tnership, WestJet also created a faux in-f light safety video that showed guests how to properly drink a Coke on board. According to Christina Clifford, sponsorship and experiential coordinator at WestJet, the Halifax f light was chosen because it was a market the ‘Share A Coke’ campaign hadn’t hit yet and they learned through social listening that many consumers in Halifax wanted it to come there.
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social
pop-up restaurant above the clouds
#happytohelp KLM
SWISS
One of the trends highlighted in our 2014 State of Airline Marketing report are socalled ‘micro events’. Ranging from mid-air fashion shows to inflight bingo and product giveaways, a growing number of airlines are organizing onboard events in order to turn an otherwise unremarkable flight into something passengers will tell the social circle online and offline. An interesting concept has been announced by SWISS, which will be turning flight LX 16 from Zurich to New York on 21 November into a “pop-up restaurant above the clouds.” Chef Andreas Caminada, of Switzerland’s three-Michelin-starred restaurant Schloss Schauenstein (which is ranked #43 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list) - along with his entire kitchen brigade – will be cooking
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for “all passengers,” from First Class to Economy. Camina will also personally serve his creations – accompanied by wines that he has personally selected – with the support of SWISS’s cabin crew team. “In addition to our ‘SWISS Taste of Switzerland’ inflight foodservice concept, we want to offer our guests a further and unique culinary highlight on this particular flight,” says Frank Maier, SWISS’s Head of Product & Services. “And we are delighted that, in collaboration with Andreas Caminada, we will be the first airline in the world to take the innovative ‘pop-up restaurant’ concept and offer it above the clouds. Further details of the themed flight are available at the event’s microsite . SWISS is also holding a special draw for the event, with a pair of Business Class tickets and four pairs of Economy tickets to win.
KLM, known for its savvy social mediabased customer service (and innovative marketing campaigns), took both to new levels with a bold #HappyToHelp . Star ting with the premise that the best promotion for customer service is great customer service, a dedicated team scanned social media during five days for passengers facing travel woes throughout the world, and responded with a creative and relevant #HappytoHelp answer in real-time – even when those passengers were not travelling with KLM. Selected problems would then be solved in a variety of ways, ranging from actual physical intervention – such as helping someone retrieve a forgotten passpor t and still make their flight – to providing one-toone advice or information through social
media, which ranged from a simple text message to an Instagram picture, a Vine, or YouTube video. A custom-designed ‘real-time newsroom’ glass pavilion based at Amsterdam Schiphol Airpor t served as the central ‘control hub’ for the campaign and housed rotating 30-people teams from both the airline and its agency, working round-theclock in shifts. Meanwhile, KLM agents at Amsterdam Schiphol, São Paulo-Guarulhos, New York JFK and Hong Kong International also proactively approached travellers that seemed to have a problem. The airline had film crews on standby to shoot filmed responses to customers’ problems and record footage of the most interesting and unusual problems solved, which have been uploaded on YouTube. Examples here , here and here .
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#minthunt, key to the sky
fly it forward JETBLUE
JetBlue is putting its own slant on the concept of “paying it forward,” in a social-mediadriven initiative called “Fly it Forward” (video here ). The program sends one ticket on a never-ending trip around the JetBlue network, aiming to enable people to fulfill a dream, a humanitarian effort or make a meaningful impact on the world. The airline started the long-term campaign by awarding one free JetBlue ticket to a deserving individual involved in humanitarian efforts, then let that person select another deserving recipient of a free ticket, and so on and so on. Or as the Creativity Online website nicely summarizes the heartwarming concept: “JetBlue is turning an airline ticket into a chain letter of human goodness.” The first Fly It Forward ticket recipients, shown in this video , include Tameka Lawson, who
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JETBLUE, ALASKA AIRLINES
represented her Chicago non-profit I-Grow at a UN conference in New York, and Louis Elneus, who helped build the first public library in his home country of Haiti. These initial recipients were found and picked by JetBlue employees, and now the brand is asking people to submit their own nominations for the next people to get the ticket, through the Fly It Forward microsite site and social channels using the hashtag #FlyitForward .
As travelling is all about discivering new places, an often used tactic by airlines is to create a buzz via scavenger hunts: tweeting clues via social media about secret locations around a city where fans and followers can f ind free tickets. On 24 and 25 October, JetBlue’s #MintHunt in San Francisco gave away an entire plane’s wor th of trips to NYC – 159 tickets total, including 16 in JetBlue’s new Mint Business Class – to promote its new transcontinental service. On both days, JetBlue tweeted clues to help locals f ind one of the 159 #MintHunt game cards hidden at 16 locations around San Francisco. When par ticipants recognized one of the spots they had to go there and try to f ind one of 9 to 10 #MintHunt game cards and tweet @
JetBlue using the instructions on the card. Video and photos of lucky winners here and here . Meanwhile in Seattle, hometown carrier Alaska Airlines organized a scavenger hunt called ‘Key To The Sky’ to celebrate its recent purchase of ten more B737-900 ER aircraft. On October 10th, the airline posted f ive clues on Twitter and Instagram that led to favorite local spots around Seattle. The cryptic clues were pretty tricky and those who solved the clue – and were the f irst person at each location and say “Seattle’s Airline” – landed a test drive in an Alaska f light simulator plus two round trip tickets from Seattle to any Alaska destination. Runner-ups at each location were awarded a ride aboard a delivery f light on one of Alaska’s new aircraft nex t year.
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igital
#curiocity
#fortunetraveller
BRITISH AIRWAYS
As technology is quickly changing the way we travel, airlines are increasingly immersing themselves in digital culture culture by par ticipating in events such as TED and SXSW , establishing Digital Media Labs (Ryanair) and Innovation Hubs (Lufthansa), or co-creating new applications in ‘hack-a-tons’ (e.g, AA, Emirates, Vueling). For more, see the ‘Cool Tech’ trend in our 2014 State of Airline Marketing repor t. The latest iniative comes from British Airways, which has par tnered with leading online source Mashable to host a Twitter challenge around the question of “What’s The Nex t Big Thing In Travel Technology?” BA and Mashable invited clever minds from the UK’s tech industry to tweet their most innovative idea for creating a better travel experience, and include the tag #CurioCity , for a chance to win
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TURKISH AIRLINES
a trip to Austin, Texas on BA’s new B787 Dreamliner. Austin has a vibrant star t-up culture, is the home of the annual SXSW event, and BA star ted direct f lights to the city in March 2014. Five winners – whose ideas ranged from location-based push notif ications to mobile-linked biometric passpor ts – were chosen by a panel of judges and the group’s visit coincided with Austin Star tup Week. The itinery included welcome dinners and pub crawls with members of Austin’s tech scene, a visit to local star tups and to a Mashable par ty. Video summary of the trip here . Mashable and BA are now completing the entrepreneurial exchange by offering up a trip to London in November for four creative Austinites.
Turkish Airlines has par tnered with YouTube for a new global campaign that saw the airline f ly some of YouTube’s high-prof ile vloggers (video bloggers) to Istanbul with just a passpor t and a bag. The #For tuneTraveller initiative involves taking popular vloggers such as Devin Supertramp from the US with over 2.5m subscribers, and Damian Walters from the UK with 475,000 subscribers, to the Turkish city where they took par t in a traditional Turkish for tune telling event, after which they were sent to one of Turkish Airlines’ 260 destinations. The deal was brokered and produced by video marketing agency Rightster and includes talent from 10 countries. The YouTube vloggers were asked to record their experiences showcasing Istanbul, the chosen destination and the Turkish Airlines experience. Each video was housed on the Turkish Airlines YouTube channel .
Neset Dereli, interactive marketing manager at Turkish Airlines, commented on the initiative: “This par tnership showcases the increasing impor tance of global YouTube network par tnerships to reach a truly global audience.” Added Inanc Emre Albayrak, Interactive Marketing Supervisor at the airline: “This new innovative campaign underlines our ongoing commitment to the YouTube platform and follows on from our phenomenally successful Kobe v Messi viral campaign.” On a similar note, Turkish Airlines earlier this year also invited f ive inf luential Instagram users to Istanbul as par t of an #InstaMeetTK0001 event (covered in the July 2014 edition of this repor t) to photograph the city from different vantage points and share their photos with their audience.
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we are travelers SAS
SAS has launched a new marketing platform, called ‘We Are Travelers’ , which consists of an adver tising campaign and a broader digital content push by SAS that will see greater emphasis on the airline’s own digital content and channels. The marketing campaign has star ted with an emotional film that uses portraits of real customers and employees, showing that there are many different kinds of travellers that all have something in common – they love to travel and they do it a lot. The campaign has been launched on TV, in print , online and via outdoor adver tising in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. As par t of the new ‘We Are Travelers’ platform SAS is saying goodbye to its current Scanorama inflight magazine and is instead launching a “new editorial concept”
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VIRGIN AMERICA
called Scandinavian Traveler which consists of a new on-board magazine, website, web TV, social media content and newsletters. Says Stefan Hedelius, vice president brand and marketing at SAS: “We get over 100 million hits on our website every year and every day 80,000 people travel with us. We want to offer them high-quality content that inspires and informs, through the channels that are most suitable at the time, both before, during and after their trip.” […] “We are adopting an ambitious focus on content through our new concept with the aim is to create reading material and movies that reach a wide audience. SAS is in a high-interest industry, where wellproduced content is becoming increasingly impor tant.”
Virgin America has created a curious 5 hours and 46 minutes-long commercial, which offers a real-time look at a New York Newark to San Francisco flight within the beige confines of the fictional BLAH Airlines . BLAH is positioned as the antithesis of Virgin. The seats are cramped, the lighting is harsh, there’s scant entertainment and no real food. As well as being mind-numbingly uneventful, the film – which generated nearly 700,000 (partly) views so far on YouTube – at times is also quite unsettling, featuring lingering shots of bleary-eyed mannequins and circular whispered conversations. Says Virgin Atlantic: “On rival flights like the fictional ‘BLAH Airlines’, passengers have no choice but to be on ‘autopilot’ to get through
the tedious journey. Just trying to watch the video is downright painful—and that’s the point. If you wouldn’t sit through the entire film, why would you pay money to experience it in real life?” Adds Bryan Houlette, creative director on the Virgin America account at the airline’s ad agency Eleven, “People have a hard time sitting through five seconds of pre-roll on YouTube and we were interested to see how will they react to almost six hours of it— much of which is intentionally, preposterously, stultifyingly boring.” The campaign also includes a social media push on Twitter and Instagram . A detailed description of the campaign’s elements here .
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a journey into another dimension
the most epic safety video ever made
LUFTHANSA
To drive awareness of its new Premium Economy product, Lufthansa has launched an app for iPhone and iPad that uses augmented reality (AR) technology that gives users a 360 degree, very detailed, view of the new seats. iPhone and iPad users (iOS 7 or later) are prompted to grab a pen and paper to “draw something that flies,” then scan the drawing to see a Premium Economy seat pop on their screen, enabling them to experience the new seat intuitively in detail, and experiment with the seat’s features. Lufthansa’s new AR app differs from most, like Blippar , which only work when a specific brand logo or image such as a QR code is activated. To further highlight the key benefit of the
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AIR NEW ZEALAND
extra space the new class offers, users can fill the Premium Economy seat area with lifesize virtual objects such as pizzas, footballs, bricks and more, which are inspired Lufthansa destinations.
Air New Zealand, which has been the first airline to reinvent the flight safety video before other airlines got cool with their safety instructions, on October 22nd went back to the Hobbit theme with its latest video.
Says Mat O’Brien, creative director at digital agency Space, which created the app, “The app is an interactive way to drive home the benefits of Premium Economy by closing the physical and emotional space between customers and the brand.”
Dubbed The Most Epic Safety Video Ever Made (10+ million views so far), the video includes Hobbit directors and actors Sir Peter Jackson, Elijah Wood, Sylvestor McCoy, Dean O’Gorman, Sir Richard Taylor, and Naoyuki Shimizu, who each play themselves.
To back the app launch, Lufthansa is running an ‘in-app’ competition offering the chance to win a pair of Premium Economy tickets to any destination it flies to. Users can enter by guessing the number of jelly beans that can fit in the space provided by the Premium Economy seat.
The 4:30 minute journey begins with two Tolkien obsessives racing through the airport to make their ANZ flight. Once seated, their jaws drop when they realise that they are sitting across the aisle from Frodo Baggins himself. After their own safety video starts, they are transported into the rolling green hills of the Shire.
There, cabin crew dressed in Air New Zealand uniforms with Elvish touches of twinkly headbands, cloaks and pointy ears, inform viewers that smoking is illegal on aircraft, and the emergency landing position is demonstrated by a dragon-riding Gandalf. Sir Peter Jackson pops up to instruct viewers to turn off all electronic devices. Then, much like in the films, it all culminates in a huge battle scene, except they all end up hugging each other. This is the airline’s second Hobbit-themed safety video. The first - called An Unexpected Briefing (12 million views) was released in October 2012 as part of its partnership with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey movie.
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four weddings SOUTHWEST
For four decades Southwest was synonymous with out-of-the-box TV spots, and although the airline got a little more buttoned down following its recent rebrand (featured in last month’s report), Southwest latest TV spot, titled Wedding , is again creating a smile on viewer’s faces. The 30-second ad touts Southwest Airlines as the perfect partner for the wedding season. While it may seem like odd timing (with the current wedding season just ending), invitations are likely making their way out now, and people like the woman in the ad may be wondering how they’re going to make it to several different weddings without going broke. The humorous spot introduces viewers to a wedding-goer and dancer par excellence who somehow becomes the center of attention in
NOVEMBER 2014 ISSUE
quick succession at no fewer than four very different wedding receptions, before finally resting on a Southwest flight. “Everyone deserves 73 dollar fares,” says a voiceover, “because wedding season can get expensive.” The pleasure in the spot comes not only from watching the lady’s dance moves, but from the many little details that have gone into the composition of each scene. Certainly the best of the four receptions is the one where the woman is dancing with a very young partner. The TV spot is the first of three more that will roll out later in the month and is accompanied by a print campaign, which features productfocused messages promoting Southwest’s ‘Bags Fly Free’ and ‘free in-flight TV’ amenities.
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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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