AIRLINE MARKETING BENCHMARK REPORT February 2018 and Issue 64
‘EXPLORE THE NEW’ LUFTHANSA
SUPERHEROES BY UNITED
UPGRADE YOUR AIRLINE BY EMIRATES
WELCOME Published by aviation marketing strategy consulting firm SimpliFlying, the Airline Marketing Benchmark Report contains a wide range of airline marketing case studies each month, providing you with the latest and most innovative social, digital, experiential and traditional airline marketing campaigns recently launched by airlines around the world. Whether you’re looking for inspiration or are eager to help your airline move into the next stage of engagement, while also understanding how your airline marketing initiatives compare to campaigns from competitors in general, these repor ts are indispensable for airline professionals working in the field of marketing and corporate communications. The monthly reports also help agencies that work with airlines stay on top of the latest innovative airline marketing initiatives. For any questions about the report, please contact Dirk Singer at dirk@simpliflying.com.
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INSIDE This issue features: 1. Lufthansa- CAMPAIGN OF THE MONTH Lufthansa Blue 2. Air Asia AirAsiaOpenDoors campaign 3. Cathay Pacific - Pure Yoga / Well Travelled Lai See 4. Delta - Destination Tomorrow 5. Emirates - Upgrade Your Airline 6. JetBlue - Shared plate 7. Scoot - Go Beyond 8. SWISS - Snow Now 9. United - TSuperheroes 10. Virgin Atlantic - Screw it, let’s do it
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CAMPAIGN OF THE MONTH
LUFTHANSA - ‘EXPLORE THE NEW’ 4
Who has the oldest airline logo in the World? The answer is Lufthansa, where the German architect and designer Otto Firle designed the iconic ‘flying crane in a circle’ logo in 1918 for Deutsche LuftReederei (DLR), Lufthansa’s predecessor. The yellow we associate with the Lufthansa circle, was then added in the 1960s by graphic designer Otto “Otl” Aicher and students from his Gruppe E5 at the influential Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm.
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The result is an iconic and much loved brand. So much so that there is a whole book devoted to its design language and iconography. As SimpliFlying CEO Shashank Nigam pointed out in a ‘SimpliLive’ Show, that means that the Lufthansa logo is one of those timeless aviation liveries, sitting alongside the likes of KLM and Singapore Airlines. It symbolises trust and consistency. It also means any change is going to be controversial.
That change was officially announced on 7 February (but leaked well beforehand), when Lufthansa showed off the new livery in Frankfurt, to staff, journalists, bloggers and select social media influencers. The flying crane remains, but rather than a blue and yellow design, Lufthansa has gone (almost) all blue. According to CEO Carsten Spohr, “Lufthansa has changed and is more modern and successful than ever. From now on, this will also be visible to the public through a new design.”
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As well as removing yellow from the aircraft, the blue is a darker shade, and the underside of the aircraft is all white (as opposed to silver / grey at the moment). It will take seven years for all of Lufthansa’s fleet to reflect the new brand. The removal of the yellow has of course been controversial. In his SimpliLive show, Shashank Nigam mentions that over 30% of airlines have a blue or part-blue brand, and so the yellow gave Lufthansa a certain amount of uniqueness.
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In a Twitter poll, SimpliFlying subsequently found that ⅔ of participants identified as “team yellow” as opposed to “team blue”, with a number of respondents saying that Lufthansa was going ‘blue Qantas.’
Lufthansa’s Corporate Designer Ronald Wild said in a launch video that “Lufthansa has been defined almost equally by the colours yellow and blue We knew that if we wanted to develop further in the premium direction, we would have to give Lufthansa’s reasoning is that blue more emphasis to one of the colours.” apparently better reflects the airline’s And so, yellow lost out. premium positioning.
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However, CEO Carsten Spohr was also quick to point out that the yellow will still be present in some parts of the Lufthansa brand, in particular in airport signage. There is also a small amount of yellow on the aircraft themselves, for example as an ‘accent colour’ used on the aircraft doors.
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This could in itself cause problems and the One Mile at a Time blog questioned whether the outcome is the worst of both worlds: “You’d think a single, consistent logo for an airline would make sense. That’s why I find it weird that check-in counters will have a yellow and white logo, planes will
have a blue and white logo, etc. Isn’t that videos was reminiscent of the iPhone 7 unnecessarily complicated?” launch. To generate excitement and amplify the new brand, Lufthansa is using the hashtag #ExploreTheNew. It has also created an Explore the New website, with imagery and a social wall where fans are encouraged to post pictures using the hashtag.
As an exercise in story-telling it is excellent, and if you are going to make a major corporate announcement, this is the way to bring it to life.
Immediately after the event, the new livery (via an A321 aircraft) went on tour throughout airports in Germany, as well At the time of writing (24 hours after as European airports including Paris CDG the launch event), the social wall largely and Milan Malpensa. contains photos posted by social media influencers invited to the launch as well as Finally, the new livery marks the kick-off staff photos, so it remains to be seen how of a new marketing campaign called “Say this social wall will look as the campaign Yes to the World.” According to Lufthansa progresses (or indeed, the extent to - “It questions familiar ways of thinking which it is moderated). and habits. Lufthansa opens up the world to all explorers. With style, ambition and The website itself includes a scrolling quality. With empathy for each individual. gallery of images and videos, including Reliable and trustworthy.” the story of the Lufthansa brand and a time-lapse film of an LH aircraft being We will no doubt be covering this new repainted. campaign in future issues as it takes shape. Whether you are a fan of the new brand or not, the website does a good job in conveying the ‘premium’ message with high quality imagery and videos. When we looked at it, we thought it was kind of micro-site Mercedes Benz would produce when unveiling a new luxury car. Another observation was that the style of the
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KEY TAKE-AWAY ‘Lufthansa Blue’ has provoked some strong reactions, but does it actually matter? Indeed, FastCoDesign questioned whether the new logo and design had meant that we had now reached “peak logo outrage.” The piece pointed out that the main criteria of a logo’s success is whether it is ubiquitous and recognised. “Our collective revulsion over a small change or redesign flies in the face of that truth, and ignores the ultimate context of branding: scale.” And scale is what Lufthansa has. Whatever the opinion is now, in seven years time when the whole fleet will have the new paint job, the current controversy will be a distant memory. What matters more is how Lufthansa chose to launch and unveil its new brand. The event featuring the company’s CEO, the subsequent tour of airports, the website, and the video and photography are a textbook example of how it should be done. It all very much shouts ‘premium.’ It tells a story. Manages to convey excitement without seeming flashy. For that reason, Lufthansa’s Explore the New is our cover story and campaign of the month.
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OPEN DOOR - AIR ASIA
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This January, to celebrate its 16th anniversary, Air Asia treated fans in its home domestic market of Malaysia to a treasure hunt. In Air Asia’s ‘Open Doors’ promotion, Malaysians were asked to find one of 16 ‘hidden doors’ around the country. Once found, they had to snap a picture of themselves in front of the door and upload it onto Instagram using the hashtag #airasiaopendoors. The doors themselves were not Air Asia branded, but had traditional Malay or Chinese patterns on them. Clues on Air Asia’s social media channels directed fans to find the doors. According to Air Asia, the thinking behind the campaign was to follow “the AirAsia story in opening doors for over a decade to allow travellers to discover many unexplored destinations in the region and beyond to gather enriching experiences beyond the usual attractions.” In total a respectable 3300 photos were uploaded onto Instagram using the hashtag. 186 winners were then given points and entered into a draw to win two million ‘BIG’ points. The contest also generated extensive
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coverage in the local Malaysian press, For clues on where to find the golden including The Star, and Malay Mail. ticket on the website, fans had to watch a series of videos (specific to the country in A number of other airlines have which they were based), for example UK used ‘treasure hunts’ as a marketing fans had a UK specific video and North mechanic. For example, British regional American fans had one aimed at them. airline bmi regularly stages ‘Golden Ticket’ promotions in its destinations. In the ‘Golden Ticket’ promo, 25 pairs of tickets are hidden around a city on a given day and released in hourly batches. Clues are broadcast on the bmi website and on social media channels about the location of the tickets. Fans then have to go and find the tickets and hand them into a bmi representative in exchange for a flight voucher. Recent Golden Ticket promotions have taken place in Nuremberg (Germany), Lublin (Poland) and Norrkoping (Sweden). Normally bmi’s ‘Golden Ticket’ promotion is done in conjunction with the local airport and a media partner (e.g. the local radio station). Last year Qatar Airways ran a virtual ‘golden ticket’ campaign, which gave travellers the chance to fly to destinations including Cape Town, The Seychelles, Dubai (at a time when the airline was still able to fly there) and more for free.
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KEY TAKE-AWAY Treasure hunts can be effective as fans tend to like the quiz / competition element. As the three airlines we’ve profiled show, they can work in a number of different ways. You can run them over a month and hide a number of items around a larger area (which is what Air Asia did in Malaysia), you can run the treasure hunt over one day in one location and get fans to race from place to place to find the tickets (which is what bmi does), or you can run a virtual treasure hunt where people have to look for clues on your website (like Qatar Airways). The key for success in each case seems to be that the prize needs to be big enough (free flights normally works) and the mechanic has to be challenging but not so difficult that it puts people off.
CATHAY PACIFIC - PURE YOGA / WELL TRAVELLED LAI SEE
As every long haul traveller will know, having stiff limbs and feeling uncomfortable is a standard hazard of long flights, especially in economy. Cathay Pacific’s solution has been to team up with yoga company, “Pure Yoga” and develop instructions to help travellers keep their muscles loose both during and after the flight.
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These instructions and exercises appear on Cathay’s in-flight entertainment system under the heading ‘Travel well with yoga.’ Split into six easy-to-follow videos featuring founding teacher Patrick Creelman and senior instructor & co-founder Almen Wong, the series demonstrates yoga and meditation
routines that can be done before, during or after a flight. Cathay Pacific is not the first airline to launch an in-flight exercise programme. Passengers who watch the videos can Three years ago, London Gatwick Airport learn to perform these exercises from worked with Air China to launch its new their seats as well as a handful that they Beijing route. can do once they arrive to their hotel rooms. As part of that, Gatwick enlisted the Tai Chi society of Great Britain to develop a According to Cathay Pacific and Pure Tai Chi routine specifically for long haul Yoga, the exercises featured in the series travel. In addition to filming a video, should assist a passenger in improving which was broadcast on Gatwick’s social their circulation, enhancing their joint media channels, the Tai Chi Society turned mobility and soothing their mind for a up for the flight launch and performed more comfortable trip. the routine in front of passengers.
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Separately, to mark Chinese New Year, Cathay Pacific is selling ‘Lai See’ envelopes made out of recycled Cathay Pacific uniforms. Lai See are lucky money envelopes which are exchanged as gifts during Chinese New Year. The “Well Travelled Lai See” packets are available to buy via the airline’s online store. According to Cathay Pacific, 320 million Lai See packets are given out each year in Hong Kong alone and under 2% of them are reused. The design was created by Angus Tsui, an “award-winning Hong Kong eco-designer”, and the proceeds of the packet sales are going to charity. It’s a nice idea but trade magazine Campaign Asia took Cathay Pacific and it’s creative agency McCann to task for over-hyping its impact. The magazine cast doubt on an assertion made by McCann’s ECD, Martin Lever, who stated in a release that “there’s no better way to create genuine brand love” than a project like this. According to Campaign Asia: “Come on, man. Setting aside that it’s questionable
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whether ‘brand love’ even exists, a project such as this is a symbolic gesture at best. No one—at least no one who isn’t writing a press release—could seriously expect it to create any meaningful impact on the airline’s overall fortunes.”
KEY TAKE-AWAY Campaign Asia is being overly cynical in dismissing the impact of Cathay Pacific’s ‘Lai See’ packets. No, in isolation the promotion won’t reverse the airline’s fortunes, but nevertheless it is an innovative (and also worthy) project that links directly into a key part of local culture - Chinese New Year. You can quickly see these packets becoming collectors’ items. The Pure Yoga collaboration is interesting, and Cathay Pacific managed to get a certain amount of PR mileage out of it in terms of press coverage, but it remains to be seen what the actual uptake will be. Passengers of course have plenty of other existing options when it comes to things to see or do on the airline’s inflight entertainment system.
DELTA - DESTINATION TOMORROW
Over the past five years, Delta has developed and built a relationship with innovations conference TED-Talks, which has seen the airline come on board as an official event sponsor and partner.
The following year, the airline created “Social Soul” - an immersive digital experience inspired by the question: “how does it feel to be inside someone else’s social media stream?”
This sponsorship has been brought to life in a number of different ways. For example, in 2013 Delta bult a so-called ‘Photon Shower’ for TED talk attendees where they could energise themselves and recharge their body clocks.
In 2015, Delta’s TED theme was ‘stillness in motion’, an installation which encouraged mindfulness and the need to live in the present moment, while in 2016 Delta hosted a TED conference on board one of its flights.
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Last year, rather than creating a stunt or installation, Delta shifted focus into getting TED speakers to share their thoughts on the future of travel in a series of TED-Talk videos, headlined ‘Destination Tomorrow.’
Joachim, before moving into talks and seminars hosted by Delta staff themselves. For example, flight attendant Jeanie Brady gave a presentation on “Practicing kindness at 35,000 feet.”
In the talk, Jeanie Brady outlined how by ‘Destination Tomorrow’ has now extended being a flight attendant, she was in “the into an event for Delta employees under people business” and “connects people theme ‘Empathy.’ Last month, select with their stories all over the world.” front-line Delta staff as well as senior management gathered for a full day The 2017/2018 Delta / TED collaboration conference at the Delta museum to learn might not have had the ‘Wow’ factor of how “empathy contributes to unmatched previous years when Delta developed customer service.” a creative campaign to support the partnership, but arguably it is more The day kicked off with presentations valuable for the brand. from TED fellows Matilda Ho and Mitchell
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By working with speakers, rather than creating a stunt or installation, Delta is more closely aligning itself with the core brand value of TED - innovation and progress. The idea of getting staff involved and creating a TED event is also sound, and the quality of staff presentations as seen on the video is easily up to the standard and quality of what you would see in an ‘actual’ TED conference. Finally, the theme of empathy is an important one in the customer services area. One example of Delta bringing this to life is in the ‘Letters to Delta’ video we covered last month, which involved a customer services agent going out of her way to help a family with a sick infant in rebooking flights.
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KEY TAKE-AWAY The first few years of the Delta / TED partnership saw Delta create high impact (and high budget) immersive experiences at the annual TED conference. Delta has now shifted direction into aligning itself more closely with the content and speakers you see at TED-talks, to the extent of actually staging a TED conference of its own for its own staff. This change of direction makes sense. In the early years, Delta will have felt the need to raise awareness and tell people about the partnership. That is no longer necessary, and Delta can look at a more meaningful relationship with TED Talks, where it co-opts some of the TED brand values as its own.
EMIRATES - UPGRADE YOUR AIRLINE
Google ‘How to get an airline upgrade’ and you’ll get back almost 7,000 results with hundreds of different travel websites, blogs and newspapers giving you advice ranging from “dress up” to “fly solo.”
regularly given spurious excuses from passengers trying to chance it.
According to the UK’s Daily Telegraph, upgrade reasons head by Virgin Atlantic staff range from “My newborn baby has Of course, following the advice you get in claustrophobia,” to “Manchester United these articles hardly ever works. What’s lost today, I am really upset and need the more common is that airline staff are space to get over it.”
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Emirates has taken the idea of people trying to blag their way to an upgrade, and made a campaign out of it. But rather than tell people to upgrade their seat, Emirates is telling passengers to ‘upgrade your airline.’
your airline’ along with a Tripadvisor badge on screen about Emirates having the best economy class in the world.
In a statement to Marketing magazine, Emirates said that it had decided to take an ‘unorthodox’ approach to this A 30 second TV and online video spot campaign by not actually showing the developed by ad agency Y&R sees product and only revealing the brand all passengers walk up to a check-in desk of the way at the end. an unnamed airline. Passengers then try and give the check-in desk staff flowers, In addition to linking into the whole “how have ‘happy birthday’ balloons tied to to get an upgrade” folklore, Emirates’ said them, attempt to hypnotise them or try it was also taking a dig at other airlines and flatter them with phrases such as steadily reducing the frills on offer in “have you thought of being a model?” economy. The spot finishes with a man walking up to “In today’s environment where others are an Emirates check-in desk with the strap- stripping amenities from their cabins and line ‘Don’t upgrade your seat, upgrade shrinking legroom, we believe travellers
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KEY TAKE-AWAY Emirates has come up with a good campaign that works for a number of reasons. ‘Can I get an upgrade’ has become a running joke in travel circles, and so the Emirates’ campaign uses humour to link into something most travellers can relate to.
can relate to the desperate lengths that some people might go to, in order to get their seat upgraded. Our message is simple – why try so hard to upgrade your seat when you can fly Emirates instead?” Boutros Boutros, Emirates’ divisional SVP, corporate communications, marketing and brand, said. The Emirates focus on its economy cabin comes as it has increased the number of flights between London and Dubai to 11 a day and raised the number of economy seats on this key route, while in turn reducing the number of premium cabin seats.
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But underneath that, Emirates manages to get across a key message. What’s implicit in the Emirates campaign is that people try and ‘chance it’ with the upgrade line because the economy class experience on a number of airlines has progressively got worse over the past few years. Few airlines have the confidence to put their economy class cabins front and centre of their ad campaigns. Emirates can do so because the reality matches the brand promise, Emirates still offers a lot (for example free food and drink on shorter flights) that other airlines have cut. Finally, you could argue that the focus on economy helps the airline as a whole push a ‘premium / quality’ message along the lines of ‘Emirates is even good in economy. Just imagine what they are like in business and first class.’
JETBLUE - SHARED PLATE
According to JetBlue, only 16% of travellers “make it a point to connect with someone new at the airport.”
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To be honest, we were surprised the figure was that high as airports seem to be ‘mind your own business’ kind of places, where you look at your phone or newspaper and don’t make eye contact with strangers, let alone talk to them.
JFK Airport, in association with Coca Cola.
The airline and soft drink giant created a pop-up restaurant called “Shared Plate” where passengers could get a meal before their flight. There were only two Nevertheless, whether the true figure is catches. 16% or 1.6%, JetBlue used this insight to create a one-day campaign at New York’s First of all, as the name implies, upon
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entering the restaurant guests were seated with a complete stranger. Cameras were then in attendance to film the at first awkward conversations and to show how diners warmed up as the meal progressed.
However, what is new is the fact that JetBlue’s celebrity chef created dishes on the fly. Indeed, one criticism we would have of the campaign is that other than the ‘Banger Chili Dogs’ dish, JetBlue didn’t really produce much content about the different dishes and as the One Mile at a Time blog says, the video explaining the stunt was not that detailed.
Secondly, the pop restaurant had no menu. Instead, celebrity chef “Chef JJ Johnson” was brought on board to create dishes customised for every table. In particular, he took ingredients that blended together the culture of the Every dish and and ‘meeting’ could people sharing the food. have been turned into an individual piece of content. Indeed, JetBlue could For example, a British woman and a New have followed this up by producing its York man were served “banger chili dogs own mini recipe book inspired by the with everything bagel potato chips.” different cultures and backgrounds of ‘Bangers’ (sausages), a British staple the passengers it has on board its aircraft were given an American twist by turning every day. them into hot dogs and including fried potatoes seasoned like a NYC ‘Everything KEY TAKE-AWAY Bagel.’ The idea of staging a stunt where strangers share food isn’t completely new, KLM did something similar as a Christmas 2016 promotion, when it created a socalled ‘Bonding Buffet.’ A table was progressively lowered from the ceiling at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, with it only reaching the ground when every seat was taken.
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This was a great campaign, but if anything we feel that JetBlue didn’t go far enough in really maximising the value it got out of this. When running a stunt like this we would always ask - how can you squeeze the maximum amount of content you can get, and how can the promotion go even further. How can you extend its life span so it is more than just a ‘one hit wonder.’
SCOOT - GO BEYOND
Don’t stop in Singapore. This is the surprising message for Australian travellers made by Singapore-based LCC Scoot, which is running a promotion aimed at Aussies called ‘Go Beyond.’
than they might have originally intended to and to take advantage of low-cost Scoot flights which currently extend to Athens, Greece.
The airline says it’s making far-flung As the name implies, the campaign is destinations such as India, Greece, the encouraging Australians to go further Philippines and Germany, more accessible
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and affordable for Australian families. As a result, Scoot has enlisted the help of 10-year-old Keira Lucas, one of the stars of travel blog Our3kidsvtheworld, to talk up the benefits of taking kids on a big trip.
phrases that might be useful on their visit to the German capital.
A lot of LCCs have to answer two questions to get passengers on board. The first is “do they fly where I want to go, or where I might want to go?” Scoot’s ‘Go Beyond’ From this Summer, Australian travellers campaign seeks to address that question. will in fact be able to fly even further than Athens, as the airline launches its new The second point is ‘what is it like to route to Berlin. A YouTube video features fly them, and what corners are cut in two Germans, Marc and Stefan, talking exchange for the cheap fares?’ That Australians through different German question has been addressed by getting
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journalists to try Scoot out for themselves, crew and passengers. for example a News.com journalist was a guest of Scoot flying from Sydney to Scoot is by no means the first airline to Singapore to Athens. use virtual reality to showcase its new aircraft. Two years ago KLM launched a His verdict? This was potentially a tour of its 787 aircraft using (like Scoot) “game changer” when it comes to pop VR areas, as well as the option for getting to Europe from Australia, with the consumers to try the tour for themselves standard of the aircraft and seats on par via Google Cardboard. or even above what you would find on more established and full service carriers. The journalist also mentioned the fact that the aircraft were relatively new, something Scoot is promoting via a Virtual Reality tour of its new Dreamliner aircraft. To further promote these new planes, “Pop up VR zones” are being rolled out in China, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, Japan, Taiwan and Indonesia. The experience combines real footage and animation. Once ‘on board’, passengers can tour different parts of the aircraft and interact with dancing holiday-makers, mischievous children, astronauts, robots and a levitating yogi as some of the fun, animated characters making up the cabin
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KEY TAKE-AWAY The key to Scoot’s current marketing campaigns is awareness and education. As the press reviews of its long haul flights show, once you have people on board, they are by and large pleasantly surprised about an experience which exceeds their expectations. The challenge is getting them on there in the first place. That means showing travellers that though Scoot is a Singapore based airline, it will take you much much further than that - from this Summer all the way to Berlin. And showing that the aircraft aren’t 20 year old hand me downs from other airlines, but are state of the art and brand new.
TURKISH AIRLINES - FIVE SENSES
In our August report, we profiled Turkish Airlines which staged the first in-flight talkshow. Turkish-American TV Doctor, Dr Mehmet Oz broadcast live from an Istanbul to JFK flight with tips about keeping healthy in-flight. At the same time, the TV Doc fronted a wider project by Turkish Airlines called ‘Feel Good, Fly Good’, which as the name suggests covers everything from eating well to in flight exercises. Dr Oz has again made an appearance for a Turkish Airlines campaign, this time around the Superbowl. In the “Five Senses” ad, Dr Oz goes through the miracle of the senses, and links it back to travel. For example, he talks about how your eyes can see “ten million
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shades of colour”, and how our bodies can withstand temperatures of up to 60 degrees centigrade. At the end of the spot, Dr Oz encourages people to “get out there….see, hear taste.” By dwelling on travel as a sensory experience, this ad in many ways reminded us of some of the campaigns launched by Russian Airline S7, including ‘The Best Planet’ and (our December cover story) ‘I am you.’ As well as airing ‘Five Senses’ during the Superbowl, Turkish Airlines showed the game live on its flights. This is the third year that Turkish Airlines has run a campaign around the Superbowl. In 2016, it partnered with
the film Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice for a pregame spot featuring Ben Affleck. Last year, it sponsored the pre-match discussion show and ran an ad by Morgan Freeman, in a spot that encouraged people to ‘bridge worlds.’ Does Superbowl advertising work for a brand like Turkish Airlines? An article in Skift claims that it was “unsure how many bookings it can attribute to these ads as the metrics can be complicated.” As a result, the key really seems to be a new Crocodile Dundee film, but slowly awareness, which the Superbowl does of it dawns on McBride that Hemsworth has course deliver. actually hoodwinked him into starring in a tourism ad. Turkish Airlines is by no means the only travel brand to invest big in Superbowl The campaign, which includes Qantas marketing. Tourism Australia produced footage and mentions of ‘great flight a sixty second spot called “Dundee: The deals’ included an official looking Son of a Legend Returns Home.” website, which was released before the Superbowl itself, as well as appearances Designed to look like a movie trailer, the in “trailers” by Aussies Hugh Jackman, short video shows the “son” of Crocodile Margot Robbie, Russell Crowe, Isla Fisher, Dundee (played by Danny McBride) and Liam Hemsworth. flying from the US to Australia to be met by Chris Hemsworth. It was a funny and subversive campaign and it worked. At first the spot looks like a preview for
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KEY TAKE-AWAY
According to Quartz, “Tourism Australia had built more online buzz than most other brands that pre-released or teased their commercials online ahead of the Super Bowl. “ISpot.tv found that the fake trailers captured nearly 11% of pre-game social media buzz—including online views, and engagement on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Google search—around Super Bowl commercials. It racked up 43.4 million video views and 578k social engagements.”
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The Superbowl is one of the world’s biggest advertising events (if not the biggest) and getting stand out is hard. Turkish Airlines produced a good ad that, by using Dr Oz, drew upon many of the successful elements of its earlier ‘Feel Good, Fly Good’ campaign. Tourism Australia by contrast did something really different by creating a fake movie that actually turned out to be an ad promoting the country. The pregame buzz showed that it worked, and while the advertising creativity bar at the Superbowl is progressively being raised higher, Tourism Australia demonstrated that it is still possible to jump over it.
UNITED - SUPERHEROES
The Winter Olympics kicked off in Pyeongchang, South Korea, on February 9th, which means brands who have paid to support the IOC as a whole, or the different national teams, have been rolling out Olympic-themed marketing campaigns.
skater Nathan Chen and Paralympics Sled-Hockey medallist Nikko Landeros. Those six athletes then became the stars of a series of United films called ‘Superheroes’, which also features United staff.
In the US, this includes United Airlines In first film, each of the six chosen which has been designated the official athletes appear as Marvel comics style airline of Team USA. characters. For example, Nikko Landeros appears as “The Fury” proclaiming “Team Before Christmas, United announced USA to South Korea.” However, there’s that it would focus on six USA Olympic one problem: He’s told by another of his and Paralympic athletes, including Team USA team-mates, luger Erin Hamlin Snowboarder Jamie Anderson, figure (“The Rocket”) that “we can’t fly.”
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Erin Hamlin then continues, “but you know who can?”, which starts the second part of the video where we see United employees take centre stage. In a second film we are then introduced to United staff such as United customer service rep Lemont Penn, who appears as the superhero “Departicus” and United baggage worker Craig Cosentino who becomes “Agent Cargo.” To reinforce the superheroes and flying theme, the spots were launched to bloggers, the media, AV Geeks and United staff at an event at New York’s Helen Mills Event Space and Theater on January 20th. The event featured a screening of both the ads, and posters of the United staff who took part in the films. United even made both its staff members and the six athletes into little superhero style dolls of the kind you can pick up in toy stores. Finally, United showcased the brand new 777-300 aircraft which had been used in the filming. So far the campaign has received extensive pick-up in the marketing and travel trade press. Some of the coverage did make a reference back to some of the problems United faced in 2017, with Ad Week joking - “Among the airline superheroes, they left out -
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United CEO Oscar Munoz. Wise move. To some, he’s more of a super villain. The Re-Accommodator, perhaps? The Overbooker?” However by and large the coverage has been positive, recognising that United has
KEY TAKE-AWAY found a creative way to bring its almost 40 year association with the US Olympic Committee to life. The campaign was developed by ad agency McGarry Bowen. To give the ads a cinematic feel, the agency brought director Martin Campbell (‘Green Lantern’ and GoldenEye’) and music composer Brian Tyler (‘The Avengers’ and ‘Iron Man’) on board. United isn’t the only airline running an Olympics themed campaign. For example, Air Canada is once again the sponsor of the Canadian national team, and has painted one of its aircraft with “Go Canada Go!” sub-titles and Olympic logos as the Team Canada charter aircraft.
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United has managed to incorporate a number of different elements into its ‘Superheroes’ campaign. It gets across a sense of excitement for the Olympics, and shows the extraordinary abilities and talents that Olympic athletes need to have in a fun and creative way. But more than that, it also neatly makes a link back to United by showing that the airline plays a key part in getting the athletes to their different events. That in turn makes the, airline staff “superheroes” too. It’s a nice campaign which goes beyond the standard logo-badging exercise you see as part of a lot of sports sponsorships, in really bringing United’s role in the partnership to life.
VIRGIN ATLANTIC - SCREW IT, LET’S DO IT
“Screw It, Let’s Do It” is one of Virgin boss Richard Branson’s favourite sayings. It’s also the title of a book filled with the entrepreneur’s wisdom and life lessons. And it forms the basis of a recent marketing campaign by Virgin Atlantic.
around which Virgin Atlantic built its January content programme. The #ScrewItLetsDoIt hashtag was used throughout all of Virgin’s social media channels over January, while a short film on January 8th encouraged people to “put some carpe into this diem”
The “Screw it, Let’s Do it” campaign was designed to shake consumers in Virgin Atlantic’s home market of the UK out of their post-Christmas January blues, and encourage them to do something adventurous.
The slogan and hashtag appeared in destination videos, Valentine’s themed promotions, and content about the airline’s January sale.
However, in addition to social media content Virgin added a number of additional Overall ‘Screw it, let’s do it’ was a hook, elements.
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Research shows that around ¼ of people have some degree of fear of flying, and Virgin Atlantic claims that there are four million Brits who miss out on vacations as a result.
Virgin claims that up to 3,000 people are helped on these courses every year, with participants ranging in age from four to 87. Normally these courses will set you back anywhere up to £375.
As a result, Virgin Atlantic offered 50 people who booked a flight on 9 January, a free “Flying Without Fear” course, with the promise that if you weren’t cured by the time your holiday came around, then you’d get your money back.
The ‘fear of flying’ promo got Virgin Atlantic a decent amount of press coverage, with the Daily Mirror newspaper, Cosmopolitan magazine and Business Insider being among the media outlets who covered it.
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Meanwhile on 22nd January, Virgin Atlantic staff were on hand at London’s Waterloo station with 50 pairs of round trip tickets to Miami for £50 ($70). The catch? To get the tickets you had to say the magic phrase ‘Screw it, let’s do it’ (and hand over £50 of course), and leave the next day. Virgin of course wasn’t the only airline running a January themed campaign. Almost every major airline regularly has some kind of January seat sale campaign, but the difference is in almost every case is that the campaign leads on price only (‘fly to destination X for Y’, ‘40% off if you book today etc). Virgin Atlantic happened to think of a more creative wrapper. However our favourite January-blues travel campaign didn’t come from an airline, but from tourism authority Visit England, which on 15 January ran a series of ‘24 hours in the UK’ films under the heading ‘Join the world / discover the UK.’ Each film was produced by UK and international Instagrammers and bloggers and highlighted different things to see and do ranging from a street art tour in Bristol to early morning surfing at Scarborough in Yorkshire, from a torch-lit tour of the Roman
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Baths to exploring the wilds of Hampstead Heath in London. It’s a nice campaign and there’s no reason why an airline couldn’t do something similar using its own route network.
KEY TAKE-AWAY January sales campaigns don’t have to be pedestrian or boring and well done for Virgin Atlantic for thinking of a way to bring it to life beyond just running tactical sales ads. However if anything, Virgin didn’t go far enough. A far better ‘travel inspiration’ campaign was the one produced by Visit England, and which combined social media influencers, original film footage, a showcase of different things to see and do in the UK, and the mechanic of rolling out 24 films in 24 hours.
ABOUT US
SimpliFlying is a global consultancy that believes in thinking differently about aviation marketing. Having worked with over 50 airlines and airports around the world, it has presences in Singapore, UK, Spain, Canada and India. Today, SimpliFlying advises airlines and airpor ts on customer engagement strategy, achieving aviation business goals by harnessing the latest innovations in the social media space.
The firm also conducts MasterClasses to train and develop airline and airport teams to become self-sufficient in executing measurable and rewarding social campaigns. SimpliFlying’s growing list of clients includes Lufthansa, Emirates, Toronto Pearson Airport, Halifax International, KLIA, Jet Airways, LAN Airlines, airBaltic, Airbus and Bombardier. Get in touch at engage@simpliflying. com or visit simplifying.com.
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