ANA - Journey By Design

ANA - Journey By Design

In September, our cover story featured All Nippon Airways (ANA) for its “Is Japan Cool” campaign, which over the past five years has showcased different sides of Japanese culture from Manga to Ramen.

Japan as a destination was also the focus for a campaign launched in October called Journey by Design. In it five major Instagramers and YouTubers from around Asia Pacific were brought to the country.

They were Kevin Hendrawan (Indonesia), mingjai14 (Hong Kong), Haley Dasovich (Philippines), KIMDAX (South Korea) and newapplearial (Taiwan).

They each crowdsourced travel tips from fans before heading to Japan to explore various parts of the country. Thereafter, they participated in an Instagram challenge while filming a travel vlog for YouTube to sum up their experience.

It is the first time the brand has used multiple influencers and Masaru Watanabe, manager, marketing and sales, Asia & Oceania at ANA commented: “The result is an impactful campaign that we’re incredibly proud of.”

Each of the influencers chosen had a following in excess of six figures, meaning that in terms of reach they are easily equivalent to a mainstream media outlet. For example, newapplearial has close to 200k YouTube subscribers and her video of her flight and visit to Tokyo has so far been viewed 25k times.

The campaign was developed by video production company Brave Bison. Each influencer was clearly paid to take part, as at various points they make reference to this.

Instagram in particular is being used more by airlines because it offers the best engagement rates out of the different social networks. According to a report this year by analytics company Track Maven, Instagram works best for both b2c AND b2b brands.

Hence Lufthansa Cargo, which is of course not consumer facing, makes good use of the platform, something we covered in the August issue. Added to high engagement rates is the fact that the Instagram stories feature now has more users than Snapchat.

Airlines that have worked with major A-Listers include British Airways, which worked with Luanna (2+ million followers), and Qantas who has in the past worked with @garrypeppergirl (1.7 million followers).

However when working with social media influencers and Instagram influencers, we’d make two additional points. First of all, influencers with slightly smaller followings, so-called “micro-influencers” (5-10k followers) actually deliver proportionally better engagement than A-Listers.

Added to that, it is not necessary to be a huge airline with big marketing budgets to do the kind of thing ANA did in Japan.

For example, over the past year bmi regional has worked extensively with Instagramer groups, which has included sending Birmingham-based Instagramers to Nuremberg, and working with two major Munich based Instagramers to promote a partnership with car rental firm Sixt.

Key Take-Away

Travel is inherently visual and Instagram delivers good results in terms of engagement. You can also mix images and video and make use of Instagram stories to keep fans hooked. As a result, it makes sense to work with influencers who in terms of numbers are often like a media outlet in their own right.

Don’t ignore smaller influencers around the 10k follower mark though. Their engagement rates are better and they still have the equivalent reach of a small regional newspaper. As an airline, you’d often be willing to give seats to a regional journalist so why not an Instagramer? This is especially so if you know that seats on a certain route and over a certain month are more likely to go unsold.