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alcatraz escape rooms
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NORWEGIAN Fans of classic, prison escape movies like The Great Escape and Escape From Alcatraz will surely appreciate Norwegian Airlines’ latest innovative, outside-the-box promotional event at London’s Westfield Shopping Mall. Celebrating the carrier’s new non-stop service from London Gatwick to Oakland International Airpor t near San Francisco, Norwegian’s “Escape From Being Alcatrapped” experience consisted of an elaborate, Alcatraz-themed “escape room” complete with a fully decked-out prison cell and a stern-faced prison security guard who never broke character. Between June 24th and 26th, shoppers who were able to decipher and decode a selection of San Francisco-themed clues and break out of their cell in 15 minutes or less had their names placed in a draw to
JULY 2016 ISSUE
AIR CANADA win a round trip flight to the iconic “city by the bay” and free tickets to visit San Francisco’s historic Alcatraz island . Norwegian’s escape room also highlighted the joys of escaping the daily grind of big city life for the chance to explore the wonders of a more sunny and scenic place. Having proven itself to be a hit with crowds in London, Norwegian’s ingenious concept also generated loads of free publicity for the carrier online where it has been written up by everyone from mainstream travel blogs like TimeOut London to underground, escape room fanboy websites like Escape . And with the hashtag Roomer #Alcatrapped still generating some serious buzz on Twitter , we can expect to hear much more about Norwegian’s latest “break-out” hit in the weeks to come.
Ever since it began looking like Donald Trump would become the official Republican presidential candidate in the U.S., there has been a sharp uptick in American citizens searching terms like “How can I move to Canada?” on the internet. In a social media campaign from agency J. Walter Thompson , Air Canada plays on this and suggests that Americans “Test Drive Canada” by flying up for a weekend or holiday visit before deciding to stay for good. This cross-discipline campaign takes advantage of digital video and social media together in real time. Air Canada and its strategy par tners set up a film studio to look like an airline ticket desk with a large TV monitor behind it. They installed an actress to play the role of a customer service rep, and began shooting shor t and humorous video responses to real American
tweets about moving to Canada, as well as the “move to Canada” internet search trend in general. Then they circulated the videos using social media and the hashtag #TestDriveCanada. Some videos were filmed in direct response to user tweets or celebrity tweets, while some seemed designed to highlight lesserknown destinations like Prince Edward Island . Other videos, like this one posted to YouTube, were more general and meant to amuse everybody. Twitter users really went crazy for this campaign and the hashtag is still active. AdWeek selected the campaign as Ad of The Day on June 10th and that ar ticle was shared about 2500 times on social media. Canada’s largest news agency, CBC Business , also covered the story with that ar ticle being shared over 300 times.
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EXPERIENTIAL SOCIAL DIGITAL TV, PRINT, OOH
