Superheroes by United

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.

In the US, this includes United Airlines which has been designated the official airline of Team USA.

Before Christmas, United announced that it would focus on six USA Olympic and Paralympic athletes, including Snowboarder Jamie Anderson, figure 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 first film, each of the six chosen athletes appear as Marvel comics style characters. For example, Nikko Landeros appears as “The Fury” proclaiming “Team USA to South Korea.” However, there’s one problem: He’s told by another of his Team USA team-mates, luger Erin Hamlin (“The Rocket”) that “we can’t fly.”

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 - 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 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.

Key Take-Away

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.