IcelandAir - Your Adventure is Waiting

IcelandAir - Your Adventure is Waiting

The Nordic states have acquired a reputation over the past decade as a welcoming place for same sex couples to visit.

This includes Iceland, where same sex marriage was legalised in 2010, and which stages a large annual Reykjavik Pride event.

National airline Icelandair has celebrated this commitment to diversity in its new ad campaign. In themselves, the subject of the ads are unremarkable - they talk about the fact that you can combine points and money to buy flights and holidays.

However, the two protagonists of the ads are a middle-aged male couple, shown enjoying the sights and adventures of Iceland.

“This ad portrays a cultural trip to Iceland and the group it’s aimed at is people who travel to enjoy what life has to offer with their loved ones.

So it was an obvious choice to use a loving middle-aged couple for such an ad; it’s worked well for us in the past. But this time we thought: why not add to the diversity and make this loving, middleaged couple a same-sex couple?

Jón Skafti Kristjánsson, Icelandair brand told website Gay Iceland.

Crucially, Kristjánsson made the point that this wasn’t an LGBT campaign as such, it was simply a campaign that happened to feature a couple of the same sex, doing the kinds of things all travellers (whatever their sexual orientation) do when they come to Iceland.

Despite this, the campaign has obviously received extensive coverage in websites aimed at the gay media with Out Magazine lauding Iceland’s “excellent track record of LGBTQ friendly culture.”

The One Mile at a Time blog calls Icelandair’s ad, “the gayest, I’ve seen from an airline.”

Why? Because while other airlines do use gay characters in their campaigns, its often either subtle (for example, there is a same sex couple on the Air Canada safety video) or directly aimed at the LGBT community.

Here however, the couple is being ‘touchy feely’, though as the blogger points out, we “wouldn’t bat an eyelid if this were a straight couple.”

Other airlines that highlight the fact that they are LGBT friendly are American Airline and Delta, which have been involved in US Pride events.

Possibly the most high profile openly gay airline executive is Qantas Chairman Alan Joyce.

In May, Joyce was hit by a pie thrown by a farmer who was opposed to same sex marriage and the airline’s stance on the issue.

Key Take-Away

Icelandair didn’t make an ad targeting the LGBT community, and which would only be seen by them. It made a mainstream ad that happened to feature gay characters. As a result, gay websites and media have lauded the airline for having a gay couple in a ‘normal’ setting.

This is likely to be a win all around for the airline.

Even though the airline says it wasn’t the aim, the campaign will have the effect of making Iceland more attractive for gay travellers. Meanwhile, heterosexual visitors coming to Iceland are more likely to be socially liberal anyway and would either see this initiative positively or in a neutral light.