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HOP! Air France - Running to mum
HOP! Air France - Running to mum
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!
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From 26-28 January, Parisian parents could purchase a pair of Adidas EQT Support 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 worth €49) in the shoe box. And promoting the Loyalty Pass was of course the ultimate aim of this campaign.
The whole initiative was dreamt up by French advertising 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 “weapo nizing parents” for this campaign: .
“Guilt from a mother is one of the most powerful forces on earth. But HOP! has gone one further by coupling guilt with lustworthy 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.”
Meanwhile travel magazine Conde Nast Traveller called the campaign, “simply superb”, saying that it “will have you booking a ticket ASAP.”
HOP! Air France is not the first airline to use sneakers as a marketing tool. Last year, British airline easyJet created so-called ‘Sneakairs.’
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.
