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Five Senses by Turkish Airlines
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.
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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 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 awareness, which the Superbowl does of course deliver.
Turkish Airlines is by no means the only travel brand to invest big in Superbowl marketing. Tourism Australia produced a sixty second spot called “Dundee: The Son of a Legend Returns Home.”
Designed to look like a movie trailer, the short video shows the “son” of Crocodile Dundee (played by Danny McBride) flying from the US to Australia to be met by Chris Hemsworth.
At first the spot looks like a preview for a new Crocodile Dundee film, but slowly it dawns on McBride that Hemsworth has actually hoodwinked him into starring in a tourism ad.
The campaign, which includes Qantas footage and mentions of ‘great flight deals’ included an official looking website, which was released before the Superbowl itself, as well as appearances in “trailers” by Aussies Hugh Jackman, Margot Robbie, Russell Crowe, Isla Fisher, and Liam Hemsworth.
It was a funny and subversive campaign and it worked.
According to Quartz,
Key Take-Away
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.
