British Airways-Discover the London you don't Know

BRITISH AIRWAYS - DISCOVER THE LONDON YOU DON’T KNOW

One of the consequences of the UK’s vote to leave the European Union has been a drop in the value of the pound.

Looking at India in particular, the Indian media has pointed out that this could make the UK a more cost effective destination to visit, especially as Indian visitor numbers have steadily declined since the UK introduced biometric visas in 2008

At the same time, the UK’s flag carrier, British Airways has been keen to get a share of what Bloomberg has called the world’s fastest growing airline market.

This has resulted in British Airways rolling out a series of high profile campaigns over the past few years that seek to make an emotional connection with Indian consumers.

For example last year, BA released its “Fuelled by Love” video, a story about the human interaction between an Indian grandmother and BA cabin crew member, which received worldwide media coverage and millions of views (see our blog post on the campaign)

The latest incarnation of British Airways’ campaign to win the hearts and minds of Indian consumers is the video “Discover the London you don’t know”.

Here, the central character is a young man from Chennai who flies to London to retrace the footsteps of his grandfather, a 1950s barrister. The video uses lines from the grandfather’s diary to compare the London of the 1950s to the London of today (for example, instead of going up Big Ben like the grandfather did, the young man takes a trip on the London Eye Ferris Wheel).

The video was produced by advertising giant Ogilvy. According to the agency’s New Delhi’s creative director Abishek Gupta, the idea was to show that “how that no matter how many London stories you have heard, there’s always one that you haven’t. Also, there’s the fact that Indians have been flying British Airways for generations. The challenge was to create a film that captures both these facets.”

Though it is early days, the video has at the time of writing been viewed 135,000 times and been covered by a number of Indian business titles.

British Airways isn’t the only Western European airline making a play for a greater share of the Indian long-haul market, in the April report we talked about Lufthansa’s campaign “More Indian than you think” featuring an English cricket team trying to beat the Indians at cricket by being more Indian (which included flying Lufthansa)

KEY TAKE-AWAY

Just like “Fuelled by Love”, “Discover the London you don’t know” draws you in by telling you a story that you experience through the eyes of the main character. The campaign doesn’t really feature British Airways at all, except at the beginning and end, and it certainly doesn’t talk up different product features of the airline.

Instead it’s purely emotional advertising, which according to neuromarketing writer Roger Dooley works. Purely emotional ads tend to perform twice as well as ad campaigns that only have rational content.