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airline marketing
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,
FEB 2017 ISSUE
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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