benchmark report
airline marketing
the welcome of the home
paris/new york
BRITISH AIRWAYS
Following British Airways’ successful ‘Visit Mum’ campaign last year, the airline has launched another emotionally charged film designed to engage the Indian expatriate community. The 4-minute ‘The Welcome of Home’ video is posted on a special landing page touting the airline’s offerings to its target audience. Nor th America is home to close to three million Indian residents. A large propor tion of these people have large extended families back in India and travel back for family events, festive periods and special occasions. The film follows the story of an Indian woman named Chitra who lives in Toronto and is preparing to travel home to India to visit her family, specifically her grandmother. But Chitra has a surprise for her
DECEMBER 2014 ISSUE
grandmother; she is traveling to India with her intended fiance seeking the blessing from her grandmother. This is something her grandmother is more than willing to do as she says, “I want to see Chitra get married. Only then will I ask God to bring me up there.” With the ‘Visit Mom’ and ‘The Welcome of Home’ stories BA is doing its best to make sure the Indian expat community that lives in America and Canada understand the airline truly grasps what that life of separation is like and how it can help eradicate the barriers of geography. Suppor ting the effor t is a social media contest launching today which encourages expat travelers to share a photo that reminds them of home to @British_Airways with the hashtag #WelcomeOfHome. Those selected will earn the chance to win a trip home for two.
OPENSKIES
As two of the world’s cultural epicenter, Paris and New York are constantly being compared in terms of everything from fashion and food to art and attitude. However, those differences have been the inspiration behind so many books, movies, TV shows and plays, they’ve become clichéd. ‘Paris/New York’, a two-minute spot for Open Skies (a British Airways subsidiary that flies exclusively between Paris and New York), nevertheless manages to inspire by drawing a series of visual comparisons between the two cities.
surrounding the Arc de Triomphe next to the Washington Square Arch; the Métro running parallel to the subway. The video progresses from sunrise to sunset, ending with a final sunrise over the wing of an Open Skies plane. Some of the pairings are a bit stereotypical (the Eiffel Tower next to the Statue of Liberty; a plate of escargots alongside a pepperoni pizza), but other seemingly mundane shots (Vélib’ vs. Citibike; a man selling crêpes on the sidewalk paired with a street meat vendor; graffiti on the sides of two buildings) provide delightful little snippets of everyday life.
To create the ad, Paris-based filmmaker Franck Matellini shot time-lapse video of dozens of everyday scenes in New York and Paris, then connected similar shots on a split screen. Examples include a bridge on the Seine matched to a bridge on the Hudson; the bustle
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EXPERIENTIAL SOCIAL DIGITAL TV, PRINT, OOH
