benchmark report
airline marketing
FEB 2017 ISSUE
A monthly selection of the most innovative marketing campaigns launched by airlines around the world SimpliFlying Feb 2OI7
Issue 53
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welcome. Published by aviation marketing strategy consulting firm SimpliFlying, the Airline Marketing Benchmark Repor t contains a wide range of airline marketing case studies each month, providing you with the latest and most innovative social, digital, experiential and traditional airline marketing campaigns recently launched by airlines around the world. Whether you’re looking for inspiration or are eager to help your airline move into the nex t stage of engagement, while also understanding how your airline marketing initiatives compare to campaigns from competitors in general, these repor ts are indispensable for airline professionals working in the f ield of marketing and corporate communications. The monthly repor ts also help agencies that work with airlines stay on top of the latest innovative airline marketing initiatives.
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This issue features:
For any questions about the repor t, please contact Dirk Singer at dirk@simplif lying.com.
l Cathay Pacific l Emirates l Hop! Air France l JetBlue l JetStar l KLM l Qantas l Swiss International l Thomas Cook Airlines l Virgin America
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Pacific’s iconic brushwing brand identity . Finally the world map fades away leaving only the destination points and connecting brush strokes on a white canvas. At the bottom left corner of the ar twork, the member’s name will appear, as well as the date of creation.
art map project CATHAY PACIFIC Cathay Pacific has launched a new Ar t Map project which has been described by the airline as an “innovative marriage of travel data and bespoke ar t”. In this creative and original customer appreciation campaign, the airline uses route data collected from the flights of Marco Polo Club members to create for them a bespoke bir thday gift: a beautiful visual representation of their year of journeys with Cathay Pacific and/or Cathay Dragon. Optimizing passenger data to truly personalize the travel journey and display intimate understanding of personal preference has long been a goal of airlines and other travel-related businesses. While the industry is getting better at knowing passengers, predicting behaviour and presenting well-tailored offers and services, many of these initiatives have fallen shor t on expectation.
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”Rather than send a mass-produced impersonal bir thday greeting, the company wanted to make a more meaningful connection with its members,” said Elaine Lee, manager of loyalty marketing at Cathay Pacific. “Ar tmap creates some real emotional value for our members. Each ar tmap is hosted on a mini-site, where members witness their piece painting itself before their eyes, elegantly illustrating their year of travel. If they choose, members can then print a hi-resolution copy of their bir thday ar twork for framing. But the Ar t Map is simple in execution (using only passenger route information, bir th date and email), non-intrusive, beautiful and touching. Most impor tantly though, this digital ar twork is easy to share on social media, through a selection of clickable icons.
On their bir thday, Marco Polo Club members are invited to visit a micro-site where they are greeted with a happy bir thday message and some information about the ar t they are about to witness. They then watch as their year of journeys are plotted onto a world map, then traced with brushstrokes that are inspired by contemporary Chinese ar t, and intentionally reminiscent of Cathay
Cathay Pacific worked closely with McCann Worldgroup , loyalty exper ts ICLP and Hong Kong artist Henry Chu on this campaign, which has been widely praised by marketing and creative branding publications such as Marketing Interactive , Creativity Online , Campaign Brief Asia and many more.
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A380 at dubai miracle gardens
An Emirates press release states that the frame of the giant aircraft covered in more than 500,000 fresh flowers and living plants – with 9,000 of those dedicated just to the red and white Emirates logo on the side of the fuselage. When in full bloom, the aircraft structure will be adorned by 5 million flowers and will weigh over 100 tonnes.
EMIRATES In a city that’s home to the world’s tallest skyscraper, the world’s tallest hotel, the world’s largest shopping and enter tainment complex and the world’s most challenging indoor ski run, it isn’t surprising to also find the world’s largest natural flower garden and one of the world’s most glamorous airlines. Staying true to the locally-held belief that that bigger is better, Dubai’s five star international carrier Emirates has par tnered with the Dubai Miracle Garden (mentioned above) to create a life-sized Emirates A380 covered in blooms – which stands today as the largest floral installation on ear th, taking up approximately 10% of the 72,000 square meter garden The monumental installation appeared at the end of 2016 and will be on display in the Miracle Garden, which receives approximately 55,000 visitors each week, FEB 2017 ISSUE
A time-lapse video showing the construction phase of the installation, where 200 workers toiled for 180 days to complete the project on time , has performed very well on YouTube with 369,000 views. Many popular local news outlets like Time Out Dubai covered this story, and the recordsetting project even made it as far as the New Zealand press .
for several months. According to Emirates’ Divisional Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications, Marketing and Brand, the “blooming” Emirates A380 will inform, inspire and delight visitors through its sheer scale and beauty. He adds that it also enables folks who have not yet flown the A380, to get up close to the double-decker.
The exhibit also helps Emirates underscore the eco-friendliness of its operations and specifically its A380 fleet. All plants were grown sustainably with special practices used to limit water consumption and were transpor ted ethically, while recycled materials were used in fabrication of the structure, says the airline.
Considering the popularity of the YouTube post, the very high volume of visitors to Dubai Miracle Garden (very high quality direct-to-consumer brand exposure) and the media buzz generated by 80-metre wide, 72-metre long and 24-metre high Emirates aircraft, the exhibit looks like it will be wor th every flower for Emirates.
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“weaponising parents” for this campaign: .
running to mum
“Guilt from a mother is one of the most powerful forces on ear th. But HOP! has gone one fur ther by coupling guilt with lustwor thy sneakers, or rather sneaker. While the airline is drumming home the message that mum and dad really, really want you to come home, it’s also dangling a juicy prize in front of you to make sure you do so.”
HOP! AIR FRANCE In January, Air France subsidiary HOP! came up with an innovative way to persuade parents to get their kids to come and visit them - by buying them Adidas shoes!
Meanwhile travel magazine Conde Nast Traveller called the campaign, “simply superb”, saying that it “will have you booking a ticket ASAP.”
From 26-28 January, Parisian parents could purchase a pair of Adidas EQT Suppor t ADV sneakers at one of the city’s Citadium stores and have it sent by HOP! to a child who lives in another city The catch in this ‘Run to Mum’ campaign was that HOP! only sent one shoe to the child. Getting the other shoe meant flying to see your parents to collect it. Needless to say, HOP! made it easy for the child to do so, by placing a free youth loyalty pass (normally wor th €49) in the shoe box. And promoting the Loyalty Pass was of course the ultimate aim of this campaign.
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HOP! Air France is not the first airline to use sneakers as a marketing tool. Last year, British airline easyJet created so-called ‘Sneakairs.’ The whole initiative was dreamt up by French adver tising agency Les Gaulois , which developed a micro-site around the campaign, featuring a video showing sad parents clearing up in January after the Christmas family celebrations.
HOP! Air France’s sneaker promotion received high praise in marketing and trend magazines for being fun, different and effective. For example, Contagious Magazine commended HOP! Air France for
Initially trialled in Barcelona, these were vibrating sneakers which took you on a tour of the city. Each shoe vibrated when it was time to turn a street corner (e.g. the left shoe for left and the right shoe for right), while if your feet vibrated twice it meant you were lost.
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all you can eat snacks
Google to UNICEF – the Edible Ad concept has proven to be a huge hit with JetBlue passengers and fans, even if its taste left something to be desired by some users on Twitter . But then again, the carrier itself made a point of cheekily warning in the fine print that “we’re not saying you should, but you could” eat the ad, so, readers were at least warned beforehand. And judging from the overwhelmingly positive buzz online the unusual promotion has definitely helped get the point across that no one goes hungry for long on a JetBlue flight.
JETBLUE Low-cost carrier JetBlue wasn’t just the first US airline to offer free personalized inflight enter tainment to their passengers when they installed flat screen monitors (with access to an array of DirectTV channels) in 2000, but they are also one of the only carriers flying who still offer free, unlimited, brand-name inflight snacks. And to the delight of their fiercely loyal fanbase – who have, in the past, helped transform beloved JetBlue inflight treats like Terra Blues potato chips and Skeeter NutFree chocolate chip cookies into runway best sellers on the ground – JetBlue is also the only carrier anywhere to offer unlimited “refills” on their free inflight snacks as well. Highlighting that unique distinction in an eye-catching, and very funny recent print campaign entitled “Edible Ad,” JetBlue crafted a 100% edible newspaper ad from potato starch, water, vegetable oil and glycerin. FEB 2017 ISSUE
Though it might not have tasted like much, the ad definitely proved the lengths to which the carrier will go for their passengers. A point that is especially resonant in today’s era of buy-on-board ubiquity when everything from headphones to inflight video games and even checked luggage
come with an often-hefty additional price tag. The brainchild of mad marketing geniuses at UK-based ad house Mullen Lowe -- who have crafted innovative, outside-the-box promotions for everyone from IKEA and
Recently written up on such popular online sites as AdWeek and Campaignlive. com , perhaps the most ringing endorsement of all for JetBlue and Mullen Lowes’ all-you-can-eat awesomeness came from iconic New York City television host Pat Kiernan who actually ate the print ad on the air during his hugely-popular “In the Papers” segment . And from the contented look on Kiernan’s face, it went down rather nicely, especially with a large glass of water.
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Many Chinese commentators noted how fluent the well wishers were in the language, with a few even stating that their grasp of the language was better than theirs.
chinese new year
“I have never seen an ad that gives me constant goosebumps and thrills, I thought this has to be the winner,” wrote Facebook user Lenny Carey. “Come on, with all the Malaysians, the non-Chinese, speaking in few Chinese languages, in such amazing fluency, totally blows me away.”
JETSTAR AND MALAYSIA AIRLINES This year Chinese New Year fell on 28 January. To celebrate, low cost carrier Jetstar launched a campaign that might at first sight seem at odds with an airline’s core model of flying people between different destinations as they actively encouraged people to stay at home. To be more precise, Jetstar offered to waive any flight change fees for Singapore-based passengers who wanted to stay at home with their family on 27 or 28 January.
showed them a video of their parents and grandparents talking about family New Year’s celebrations.
In addition to being suppor ted by social media and online adver tising, Jetstar filmed a short experiment involving a group of Singaporean 20-somethings.
Naturally after seeing their parents on film, Jetstar’s group declined the offer of free flights, whereupon they were handed travel vouchers wor th 888 Singapore Dollars.
Jetstar’s travellers were shown being offered free flight tickets, with the catch that the flights had to be taken on New Year’s Eve (27 January). Immediately after presenting the millennials with the tickets, they then
“As an airline we carry our customers to their dream destinations all year long. However, this is the time we should stay home as family comes first. We hope our customers will treasure their reunion at home with
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their loved ones this coming Lunar New Year because you can always travel after that,” said Chantal van Wijnbergen, Jetstar regional marketing manager for Southeast Asia.
According to the airline the aim of the video was to show how “the uniqueness of Chinese New Year in Malaysia is about how all races celebrate together.”
Meanwhile, in neighbouring Malaysia, Malaysian Airlines’ Chinese New Year Video received over three million views . The reason for its popularity is that the shor t clip has an interesting twist - the New Year’s greetings in Mandarin are delivered by non Chinese Malaysians.
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the best places to surf, based on real-time conditions.
pop-up store SFO
At the same time, a KLM pop-up shop was installed in the heavy foot-traffic area of Union Square. This effor t was focused on promoting KLM’s inflight services and amenities. Visitors could test out lie-flat business class seats, sample Dutch coffee, try KLM’s iconic and complimentary inflight waffles and even take a vir tual Dreamliner cabin tour with VR headsets.
KLM Netherlands Flagship carrier KLM Royal Dutch Airlines first introduced its #HappytoHelp tagline and motto in 2014 with a week-long, worldwide, travellerhelping spree driven by social media chatter revolving around its Amsterdam Schiphol Airpor t. HQ. That incredibly successful campaign was designed to showcase just how far KLM was willing to go to help travellers (any travellers, not just KLM passengers) with any trip-related woes. At the time, the airline set up 200 social media savvy employees, in a glass-walled “pop-up headquarters” at Schiphol. Working round-the-clock in shifts, the blue-clad KLM travel heroes scanned global social media posts to pinpoint folks needing a help with travel – and doing whatever they could to alleviate those problems. Marketing publications and news agencies around the world went wild with the story, and the video KLM made to FEB 2017 ISSUE
KLM has been working over time to drum up brand awareness in the US. A string of comedic television commercials targeting this market made big headlines last year as well.
document the campaign collected over 3.6 million views on YouTube. Recently, the airline brought the concept back to life in another all-out “helpathon”, this time targeting the US market and the citizens of San Francisco. For two weeks in November, the airline dedicated all of its US adver tising spend to special outdoor adver tising messages
throughout the city. The airline took out billboards and pulled banners behind small airplanes, put ads on taxis and on bus stops, and had people in the streets to assist folks however they could. Over the two weeks, KLM helped locals with everything from finding missing dogs and crossing the street, to helping them look their best, giving directions, providing traffic avoidance tips and even finding
Airways Magazine published an extensive write-up of the San Francisco effor t and how it plays into KLM’s Nor th American strategy, as did Social Airlines , a platform showcasing the best of airline social media. The video KLM produced for this campaign has nearly 50,000 views on YouTube.
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australia day QANTAS Airlines are increasingly using Pop-Up installations and stunts as par t of their marketing arsenal. In this repor t alone we’ve got examples from SWISS and KLM, while Norwegian has in the past made extensive use of popups to promote new routes (for example, the airline’s ‘Escape from Alcatraz’ installation last year to highlight flights to Oakland).
The ‘beach’ was built both to coincide with Australia Day on January 26th as well as to form par t of the airpor t’s on-going 70th birthday celebration campaign . Qantas has been working with Heathrow since last year in the bir thday campaign, with passengers submitting their favourite Heathrow memory for a chance to win one of 35 pairs of return flights to Sydney.
The impor tant thing of course is to make sure that any pop-up installation ties in with the brand, and that as a visual experience it is immediately obvious.
Travellers visiting the beach outside Terminal Three experienced a taste of Australia, including sweet treats and enter tainment by a live acoustic band playing classics from INXS and Kylie Minogue.
So while it made perfect sense for SWISS to create a pop-up snowball-game experience, it’s also natural for Qantas to have built a pop-up beach at London’s Heathrow Airpor t.
Markus Svensson, regional general manager UK, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Qantas, said, “Australia Day is all about celebrating the best of Australia, no matter where you are in the world. When London to Per th
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flights launch next year, UK travellers will be able to experience Australia firsthand with our non-stop services. But today, Qantas and Heathrow are bringing the Aussie summer to them.” In Australia itself, frequent fliers were able to take advantage of special Australia Day discounts at the airline’s ‘Qantas epiQure online wine store.
‘own’ the concept of Australia as a wineproducing centre of excellence.
An interesting brand extension by Qantas, Qantas epiQure allows members of the airline’s loyalty programme to purchase wines served in first and business class and have them delivered to their homes in Australia. Wine and food purchases on the website count towards frequent flyer points, while at the same time allowing Qantas to
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world’s longest ski-lift queue
The SWISS ski-lift follows another Londonbased stunt carried out in December where the airline invited Londoners to take par t in a snowball throwing contest at the city’s Spitalfields Market .
SWISS INTERNATIONAL
An area within the market was decorated with real snow and pine-trees, where visitors could take par t in interactive games, and win business class flights to Switzerland and a holiday in St Moritz.
In the final January Weekend, Swiss International airlines (SWISS) staged a stunt in London that tied together two themes: The British love of queuing, and the increasing popularity among Brits of European ski breaks.
For a chance to win, visitors had to throw snow balls at a giant screen which featured three Swiss actors. ‘Hitting’ one of the actors meant scoring, which then counted towards the prize.
To make it happen SWISS took over the area outside London’s iconic Tower Bridge and created a Winter Wonderland complete with snow. The centre-piece of the event was a where SWISS ‘SWISSED’ experience took on the challenge of creating both the ‘most perfect’ and the longest ski lift queue in the World. A Swiss Ski etiquette exper t was on hand to coral all visitors into the queue, while at the same time giving them tips on how to wait for a ski-lift, how to safely carry skis,
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the best piste poses and managing aprèsski chat. According to SWISS the aim was to take the British queue and to give it a Swiss twist. The stunt itself was suppor ted by a PR Survey of 2,000 British adults which found that Brits spend the equivalent of 52 days
of their lives queuing. The SWISS study also found that the Brits biggest queuing locations are supermarkets and post offices. Their pet peeve is people cutting into the queue (69%), not moving up in a timely fashion (34%) and saving a place for someone else (29%).
The whole installation was created by Berlin agency Foundry, which in addition to flights gave visitors the chance to win chocolates, travel vouchers and sun glasses. Foundry says that 6,000 snow balls were thrown during the event, with 1,500 Londoners taking par t.
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new year, new design
Cook Airlines UK has been running a ‘goodbye Grey Britain’ campaign.
THOMAS COOK AIRLINES To kick-off the New Year, Thomas Cook has announced plans to create a consistent brand identity for all four of its constituent airlines - Condor (Germany), and Thomas Cook Airlines UK, Scandinavia and Benelux.
Different images show a couple on top of a Thomas Cook plane with ‘Goodbye Grey Britain” followed by ‘Hello’ and the name of the destination (e.g. ‘Goodbye Grey Britain, Hello Las Vegas’).
For the first time in the history of the group, one design is going to unite all four brands. A corporate announcement stated that the corporate design would have a “more bold look” with a darker grey chosen than the one that was used before.
The Goodbye Grey Britain campaign focused in par ticular around what the British Media calls ‘Sunshine Saturday’ , the day in January (Jan 7th) when holiday companies see a boost in bookings at a time when the nights are long, the days cold and Christmas is an increasingly distant memory.
Changing colour tones is not the most significant par t of this development, rather the airline group has decided that marketing campaigns will no longer solely concentrate on the 100 leisure destinations that the different airlines fly to. Instead there will be more of an emphasis on “aviation images that make the flying experience come alive more.”
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In other words, Thomas Cook Airlines is moving from functional marketing messages (‘we’re a way for you to reach lots of great holiday destinations’) to ones that actually emphasise the brand (‘choose us over other airlines.’) According to Director of Customer Experience Rainer Kröpke, “as an airline, we
would like to bring our customers closer to the fascination of flying and the experience of our excellent product. The holiday star ts with us from the point you get on board. “ Star ting with the German and UK markets, a series of different marketing initiatives are bringing the new positioning to life. For example, over the past month Thomas
In December, parent company Thomas Cook ran a UK TV campaign that featured both a gay kiss and gay parents. The travel company said that the ad, entitled ‘You want, we do’, “reflects a modern population” , and in addition to a TV is suppor ted by snapchat style filters.
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operation chihuahua
also offered passengers the chance to “gift” their savings to family and friends and even the oppor tunity to donate directly to the cause at a dedicated Tiny Dogs, Tiny Fares website . Marking the occasion with a splashy, red-carpet send-off for a dozen or so tiny dog VIPs at San Francisco International Airpor t, Virgin America flight crews also shared pics and video of the Chihuahua’s flight on Instagram and Twitter using the carrier’s inflight WiFi.
VIRGIN AMERICA Although Paris Hilton and the thenubiquitous Taco Bell chihuahua ads may have launched the tiny dog trend in Los Angeles in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, the sad reality for many pampered micropooches these days is that way too many of the Chihuahuas that are adopted in California end up abandoned by their owners in shelters. That’s why Virgin America stepped in seven years ago to unleash their very cool initiative. “Operation Chihuahua” Launched in par tnership with the San Francisco Animal Care and Control society, The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and Animal Haven, the program flies shelter Chihuahuas and other small dogs on special Virgin American flights from San Francisco to New York where the demand for tiny dogs well exceeds the supply.
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Kicking off this year’s event in typically cheeky, Virgin America style, the carrier offered passengers who booked flights on Cyber Monday this past November not only a “tiny fare” discount of 30%, but also promised to donate $10 from every booking
that day to future Operation Chihuahua airlifts in an effor t to give tiny dogs “wings” for months and years to come. Timed to coincide with one of the busiest travel periods of the year, the campaign
Already something of a cult sensation online, the promo’s adorable 60 second spot has been viewed upwards of 2,300 times on YouTube with a longer, even more adorable, two-minute clip having been viewed 2.5K times since going live on November 29th. Written up on such popular travel industry sites at BoardingArea.com and eTurboNews.com , this year alone the campaign raised a far from tiny $75,000 in cash and in-kind donations for Virgin’s animal shelter par tners. And though there was no mention of what the lucky pooches involved watched inflight, Virgin America’s lovely holiday campaign definitely gives new meaning to the expression: “Every dog has his day!”
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SimpliFlying is a global consultancy that believes in thinking differently about aviation marketing. Having worked with over 50 airlines and airports around the world, it has presences in Singapore, UK, Spain, Canada and India. Today, SimpliFlying advises airlines and airports on customer engagement strategy, achieving aviation business goals by harnessing the latest innovations in the social media space.
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EXPERIENTIAL SOCIAL DIGITAL TV, PRINT, OOH
