Turkish Airlines - How Ridiculous

Turkish Airlines - How Ridiculous

Turkish Airlines has a long track record of supporting professional basketball.

It’s been the title sponsor of Europe’s premier basketball league, Euroleague, since 2010, a partnership that was renewed for five years in 2013, in a deal worth €37.5 million euros.

The agreement has given Turkish Airlines on and off-court branding rights, as well as title sponsorship of the ‘Final Four’.

event, which sees four top European teams squaring off at the end of the season.

This year at the end of May, the ‘Final Four’ event took place in Istanbul, which is of course also the home of Turkish Airlines’ main hub at Ataturk Airport.

As a result, Turkish Airlines recruited Australian basketball trick-shot stars ‘How Ridiculous’, to film a series of videos in and around the city.

This included the Galata Tower, Rumelian Castle, Maiden’s Tower and the Bosphorus Bridge. In each, the How Ridiculous team manage to get a basketball in the hoop from a great height or distance, with each shot leaving the viewer wondering ‘how on earth did they do that!.’

The video has so far racked up over two million views on YouTube and hundreds of thousands more on Facebook.

The YouTube video additionally points people to listen to the track that forms the soundtrack to the How Ridiculous / Turkish Airlines stunts - ‘You’ by Skybourne.

The whole campaign was developed by advertising agency Efabrika, with the hashtag #Final4LandsinIstanbul being used to generate excitement about the basketball competition (eventually won by Istanbul’s Fenerbahçe) as a whole.

Lots of major airlines are involved in sports sponsorship. For example the three main Gulf carriers all spend large amounts of money in promoting professional football / soccer in particular, and likewise Turkish Airlines has in the past been involved with clubs such as Manchester United.

However, Turkish Airlines’ basketball tieup is smart for a number of reasons.

Despite it sometimes being ignored by mainstream European broadcasters, the Euroleague is incredibly popular, with an average match attendance of 8000+ per game. In professional basketball, only the USA’s NBA does better. It attracts a young, affluent audience and the spread of clubs (currently in Russia, Spain, Turkey, Israel, Germany, Italy, Serbia, Greece and Lithuania) allows for individual campaigns and branding in each location.

Meanwhile, working with ‘How Ridiculous’ brought Turkish Airlines’ basketball sponsorship and heritage to a far wider audience than would otherwise have been the case.

Key Take-Away

Ordinarily something like the Final Four championship would probably only have been of interest to fans of those four clubs and people watching the games. The ‘How Ridiculous’ project significantly increased its reach for Turkish Airlines.

The How Ridiculous videos are fun, watchable and as brand ambassadors the guys from the How Ridiculous team come across well. Well done Turkish Airlines for a creative and engaging campaign.