Air Canada - See Canada

Air Canada - See Canada

In February we talked about Air Canada adopting a redesigned livery and uniforms to celebrate the country’s 150th birthday.

This was supplemented by Air Canada’s vacation arm putting together 150 “close to home but far from ordinary” travel packages spanning urban Getaways, Guided Tours, the newly curated Wildlife Adventures, Fly & Drive Vacations, Fly & Rail Vacations, Ski Vacations, and Golf Vacations.

In March, Air Canada then ran a photo contest in its ‘En Route’ in-flight magazine, where photos tagged #Canada150 had the chance to be featured in the publication, with one lucky winner receiving round trip tickets.

The cost of photo contests like this are minimal, but they are a great way to get user generated content that you can then re-use - with much of the content being as good or better than what you would get from a professional photographer.

Currently, the latest element in Air Canada’s Canada birthday celebrations has been a “See: Canada / #Canada150” promotion running across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

In March the prize was reasonably modest. This time Air Canada has drastically increased it to giving away 150 pairs of tickets anywhere within Canada.

What do you have to do to get those tickets? Using the hashtag #Canada150 you have to post a video or photo of your favourite spot in Canada that you think others should discover.

Arguably the use of the #Canada150 hashtag cuts both ways. A lot of Canadians are obviously using it to celebrate the country’s birthday, and so it’s popular. For example, at time of writing there were 900k Instagram posts using the hashtag.

However this also means the Air Canada competition images get lost. Though entrants also had to tag @aircanada, it is still difficult for the casual user to spot the competition entries among the mass of general Instagram posts using that hashtag.

Even worse, when we looked the number one post (according to Instagram) with the #Canada150 hashtag was a crew picture from competitor WestJet!

The other thing Air Canada could maybe have added was a rotating gallery of the best competition entries on its 150th birthday page, possibly by integrating a curation tool such as Olapic or Candid.

Key Take-Away

Air Canada’s Canadian birthday celebrations have been consistent with different elements, tactics and promotions rolled out during the year.

The other important element is that Air Canada is obviously promoting its own domestic route network through these tactics, which in turn encourage fans to show off the things they love most about their home country. The link is clear and obvious.

The one possible missed trick is that a bespoke hashtag could have been used, and more use could have been made of the photo and video led competition entries.