benchmark report
airline marketing
vacation is calling
brad is single
AIR TRANSAT
NORWEGIAN
In a bid to sell positive emotions and the joy of holiday anticipation, rather than mere destinations and tickets, Canadian holiday carrier Air Transat’s first campaign with new agency par tner Sid Lee attempts to create a more holistic view of the vacation experience by tapping into how people feel from the minute planning begins to the memory of warm, sunny places.
suddenly floating, and for a young boy a suburban street puddle becomes a lagoon encircled by sand and palm trees.
The campaign centers around a twominute, cinematic video , which is suppor ted more broadly by radio adver ts, out of home adver tising (billboards, etc.), digital and social components.
“Everyone is selling beaches and hotels, but since we’re dedicated to selling holidays, the whole experience is what we have to build on,” Geneviève LeBrun, VP of marketing at Transat Tours Canada told Stragegyonline. ca .
High production quality is apparent in this video and ethereal music tells us quickly something magical is likely to happen. As we watch on, a business man discovers a lush, tropical jungle in a busy downtown street. A woman’s bed transforms into a turquoise blue ocean upon which she is NOV 2016 ISSUE
At the end of the video we see top down shot of an Air Transat plane flying over the boy and hear a voice say “When you book with Air Transat, you’re already on vacation. Air Transat – vacation is calling.”
The video has been viewed more than 125,000 times on YouTube since October 7th. Sid Lee and Air Transat have also reworked the airline’s logo, making the iconic blue star really pop.
Proving that no publicity is ever really bad publicity, Norwegian Airlines launched a cheeky, real-time marketing campaign recently entitled “Brad is Single” . Centered around the much-publicized break-up of Oscar-winning Hollywood power couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, a series of new Norwegian ads offered cheap flights from a number of prime European locales to Los Angeles for passengers hoping they might have a shot with the newly-single Hollywood hunk. And though some humorless fans online thought the campaign was maybe a tad “too much too soon,” the fun, playful tone of the campaign definitely struck a chord with legions of social media users around the world, generating Norwegian loads of free publicity for their discounted fares to the City of Angels. Pictures and screencaps of the simple, minimalist ad set against a
red background lit up the blogosphere and sites like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram overnight with some fans even suggesting that Norwegian offer passengers named Jennifer (as in Anniston, Pitt’s ex-wife) be given an additional 50% off the carrier’s already deeply discounted fare. And though the carrier has assured the public that simply flying them to Tinseltown at a discount does not guarantee an audience with Mr. Pitt, the inspired hilarity of Norwegian’s campaign has already gone viral and been covered everywhere from the Telegraph UK and the New York Daily News to USWeekly and even Time magazine . No word yet on whether or not the ad has amounted to any new romantic prospects for Pitt, but Norwegian is definitely feeling the love from this one.
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EXPERIENTIAL SOCIAL DIGITAL TV, PRINT, OOH
