benchmark report
airline marketing
experiential
airline christmas campaigns
a festive flight
VIRGIN ATLANTIC x MICROSOFT
VARIOUS AIRLINES
Each year, airlines are getting more creative in adding a festive touch to every inch of their marketing communications. Initiatives range from videos designed specifically for the time of year to ‘random acts of kindness’ that surprise passengers travelling on and around Christmas. The main objective of these efforts is to create engaging content that goes viral online. Examples include Delta’s special holiday inflight safety video and Air New Zealand ‘A Very Kiwi Christmas’ Meanwhile, United’s ‘North Pole Fantasy Flight’ is a ‘fantasy flight’ staged by 120 United San Francisco-based employees for children recovering from serious illnesses. The event saw 54 families board a United B747 at a specially designed Gate 82 at SFO, fly for approximately one hour, and then land at the North Pole (a.k.a. SFO Gate 86), where they received gifts from Santa. JANUARY 2015 ISSUE
Other initiatives such as Air New Zealand’s Christmas Fairy (video ) saw the airline put together some surprises for its passengers and delivering them onboard 11 flights.
Another airline holiday season campaign that stood out was Virgin Atlantic’s ‘A Festive Flight’ , for which the airline partnered with Microsoft.
On a similar note, Iberia’s ‘Magic In The Air’ (video ) surprised passengers on a flight from Mexico City to Madrid. In mid-flight a ‘live’ video-link appeared on passengers’ IFE screens showing how ‘Santa’ came walking along the top of the fuselage before entering the cabin and hand out presents to all passengers onboard.
At London Heathrow Airport, each of the 264 passengers boarding Virgin Atlantic’s new 787 to Boston on December 24th was given a Microsoft Windows tablet and was told that their purpose would be revealed later in the flight.
For more airline holiday season initiatives, see SimpliFlying’s round up of airline Christmas videos.
One of the pre-installed apps on the tablet was called ‘Festive Flight’ and allowed passengers to connect to the aircraft’s onboard WiFi and track the progress of their own flight, as well as seeing where they were in relation to Santa, who was in the midst of his own airborne travel on Christmas Eve. Whenever the Virgin flight and Santa’s reindeer powered sleigh were within
communicable proximity of each other, Santa would respond to messages that had been sent to him by passengers using the app. As the flight passed over Greenland, Santa appeared to radio the Virgin Atlantic pilots flying the aircraft, asking for permission to land on the plane. A simple projector was used on the ceiling of the plane to make it look like passengers could see, through glass panels, Santa’s reindeer landing on the roof. Santa jumped out of the sleigh, wiped the snow from the roof and waved hello to the people inside. Moments later, Santa appeared inside the cabin. He stopped to pose for selfies before announcing that the tablets could be kept as a gift and disappearing back into the night sky. Video and images of the event here and here .
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EXPERIENTIAL SOCIAL DIGITAL TV, PRINT, OOH
