benchmark report
airline marketing
digital
southwest and super-mario
holidays on demand
SOUTHWEST In January, Southwest Airlines went ‘oldschool’ digital with a campaign involving Nintendo’s Super Mario. In this campaign , Southwest worked with Nintendo to create a custom level for Super Mario Maker, a new Wii U game that lets players re-live the early days of console gaming and create their own levels. The Southwest level is designed to be easy and accessible, serving as an oppor tunity to collect lots of coins and a bonus life. While the Airline branding is minimal, the Southwest level does include nods to the airline, with a plane for Mario to zoom around in, blocks that (slightly) resemble a 737 and a few hear ts made of coins. The best thing about it – from a gamer’s perspective – is that the Southwest level contains a hidden magical mushroom
FEB 2016 ISSUE
TRANSAVIA not found anywhere else in the game. If discovered, this mushroom unlocks a classic “SkyPop” costume (ca. 1989) that Mario can wear. Talk about geeky gold! Needless to say the initiative has been extensively covered in the gaming media, via gamer/tech publications like Gamespot. com and Digitaltrends.com . Nintendo and Southwest began their marketing par tnership in 2013, when the famed gaming company became the official video game par tner of Southwest. The par tnership kicked off in grand style , just before the holidays, when each lucky passenger on flight 1883 from New Orleans was given a free Wii U game console by none other than Super Mario himself.
In January, Transavia, a Dutch low-cost carrier and wholly-owned subsidiary of Air France/KLM, par tnered with French language online video service Canalplay (par t of Canal+), allowing people to discover and instantly book travel to destinations related to movies they watch. Between January 11 and 26, customers visiting a special Canalplay/Transavia cobranded site , were prompted to select their ‘craving’ (this could be a par ty, an adventure, romance, etc.). Then, based on the answer, a movie genre was selected with several relevant film choices offered. Once the user had selected his or her film, a flight destination was suggested and the price displayed.
The first 500 people who continued and booked the recommended flight, were given a special promotional code. The code could then be redeemed by the passenger for two months of free video-on-demand streaming from Canalplay. Aimed at passengers in the French-speaking market, this partnership is notable as it recognises that watching a film often elicits an emotional response of “I want to go there” or “I want to experience that.” This is especially since there is a clear link between film releases and tourism, just two examples are New Zealand benefitting from the Lord of the Rings / Hobbit films, and Nor thern Ireland capitalising on the HBO TV Series Game of Thrones .
For example, a person craving culture could select a film about Hercules and be offered a Transavia flight to Athens.
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EXPERIENTIAL SOCIAL DIGITAL TV, PRINT, OOH
