AIRLINE MARKETING BENCHMARK REPORT March 2018 and Issue 65
BONNIE AWARD
AMERICAN AIRLINES SAY YES TO THE WORLD BY LUFTHANSA
EXPERIENCE CLASS BY ANA
DEAR SUBSCRIBER,
Welcome to the March 2018 edition of the airline marketing report, from SimpliFlying. Not only is now the 65th issue in the series. It is also now ten years since our founder Shashank Nigam opened the doors on what has become the world’s leading aviation marketing strategy consultancy. As a result, it is worth looking at some of the changes we’ve been making to this report over the past year, with the aim of increasing the value that you get from it. As before the objective remains the same: To look at examples of airline (and occasionally if noteworthy enough, airport) marketing over the previous quarter via a series of articles. To provide marketing inspiration and intelligence, and allow you to benchmark what you do against your competitors. Last year however we redesigned the report to take on a magazine look and feel to make it more user-friendly, where one campaign is featured on the cover. We also changed from 15 short summary articles to ten longer pieces, increasing the overall report word count by 1/3 and focusing more on learnings and commentary. With International Women’s Day having happened on March 8th, this month our campaign of the month goes to American Airlines for its ‘Bonnie award’ initiative to support female filmmakers. This is an excellent campaign and CSR done right. It looks and feels authentic and there is follow-through within the organisation. In this issue we’ve also for the first time introduced two featured campaigns, alongside our cover story. They come from ANA and Lufthansa and we delve each in a little more detail. We’d love to hear your thoughts, feedback or suggestions for articles. Please do contact dirk@simpliflying.com. Dirk Singer.
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INSIDE This issue features: 1. American AirlinesCAMPAIGN OF THE MONTH - Bonnie Award 2. ANA - FEATURED CAMPAIGN - Experience Class 3. Lufthansa - FEATURED CAMPAIGN - Say Yes to the World 4. Air Canada - Our Home 5. Air New Zealand - Emoji Journey 6. easyJet - Sick Bag Poetry 7. Emirates - Badr Saleh 8. Qatar Airways #FirstIn1000 9. Qantas - Group Pilot Academy 10. Virgin Atlantic Valentines Heart
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CAMPAIGN OF THE MONTH
AMERICAN AIRLINES BONNIE AWARD 4
“For all we like to rag on them, airlines often to do a lot of good for the community.” This is what the Boarding Area blog said when talking about the Bonnie Award, a new initiative from American Airlines. Announced in 2017, with the winner chosen this year, The Bonnie Award “recognizes female directors with a remarkable body of work that demonstrates their uniqueness of vision and groundbreaking approach to film.” A three year partnership between
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American Airlines and the Film Independent Spirit Awards, the name was inspired by Bonnie Tiburzi Caputo, who became the first female pilot to fly for a major U.S. airline when she joined American. The prize is substantial - it involves a $50,000 grant from American to the winner, who this year is Chloe Zhao, who produced, directed and wrote the Western drama “The Rider.”
Though Chloe Zhao’s win was announced 2012 has been running the ‘Global Angel in January, she in fact received her prize Wings Project.’ at the 2018 Spirit Awards on March 6th. This has involved Colette Miller producing With the awards taking place in Los angel wings art worldwide, with the aim Angeles, American Airlines commissioned of reminding ‘humanity that we are the a large mural to go up in Venice Beach. angels of this earth.’ The mural features two angel wings in American Airlines colours, and was The award, Chloe Zhao as the winner and painted by Colette Miller who since the mural have been extensively featured
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on American channels.
Airlines’
social
media
The whole initiative is also underpinned by a very slick website, with a full screen video introduction and details of the nominees and winner. The American Airlines eagle logo has been altered slightly, so a gold logo sits on the corner of the page, with the Bonnie Award logo itself being a white pair of wings with Bonnie Award in gold writing. Finally American Airlines has created a “Bonnie Channel” on its in-flight entertainment system. According to American Airlines, this is “a curated collection of female directed films, trailers, and exclusive content.” THE IMPORTANCE OF AUTHENTICITY AND FOLLOW-THROUGH As well as being topical (coinciding with the rise of the #MeToo movement as well as International Women’s Day on March 8th) the Bonnie Award is a very impressive initiative. Indeed, it is probably one of the best executed airline corporate social responsibility campaigns we’ve seen, alongside WestJet’s annual Christmas Miracle campaign.
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Why? In a word because it exudes authenticity. It is clearly so much more than a brand badging exercise or a case of a corporation having a photo call with a giant cheque in front of a ‘good cause.’
The home of the award, the website, has very high production values, it looks like a film award site should.
It tells a story, and does an excellent job of promoting women in film. The video Instead, American Airlines has really opens with Bonnie’s story as a pilot and invested in this initiative and in its then seamlessly moves to a selection partnership with the Film Independent of female directors talking about the Spirit awards to make this work. importance of inclusiveness and some of the challenges they’ve faced in a male dominated industry.
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As well as authenticity there is followthrough. The award has (so far) been promoted extensively on American Airlines’ social airlines and we can see that American put money behind its Facebook posts to reach a wider audience. The creation of a ‘Bonnie Channel’ on American Airlines’ inflight entertainment system means that tens of thousands of passengers every single day will be exposed to the best in female cinematography - and of course learn about the airline’s involvement with the award. Finally, the link back to the airline by naming the award after its first female commercial airline pilot works. It seems natural and the American Airlines branding throughout is subtle as well as being classy. As an aside, we imagine the award could also be used in future recruitment campaigns for female pilots (see the Qantas / easyJet article later in this edition). For all those reasons, American Airlines is our campaign of the month.
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KEY TAKE-AWAY There are three main lessons to be learned from the Bonnie Award. Consumers can be cynical so make sure your commitment is real, and as we said, has a feeling of authenticity. American Airlines more than ticks this box. Build that authenticity by giving a CSR initiative like this prominence in your organisation, and creating followthrough. American Airlines has done this, among other things, by adding Bonnie Award content to its own entertainment system. And finally (of course) don’t try and sell on the back of something like this. Make any brand tie-ins natural, which again American Airlines has done.
FEATURED CAMPAIGN EXPERIENCE CLASS - ANA
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In September 2013, French-Japanese TV presenter Christel Takigawa gave a presentation to the International Olympic Committee in Buenos Aires in support of the ultimately successful 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics bid.
means every service is from the bottom of the heart – honest, no hiding, no pretending.”
According to Tokyo Weekender, at that 2013 IOC conference, “Using a dazzling smile and graceful gestures, Takigawa As part of that, she introduced precisely spelled out O-MO-TE-NA-SHI international audiences to a concept few as the core attribute of Japan’s legendary had heard of before. That of omotenashi, hospitality, and won the day, so to speak. or Japanese hospitality. Tokyo was picked to host the 2020 Olympic Games.” The Michelin Guide explains the term as follows: “Omote” means public face – an Thanks to that 2013 bid and speech, image you wish to present to outsiders. omotenashi is now a term that has greater “Nashi” means nothing. Combining them currency outside Japan. Which means a
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number of Japanese brands have started 2017, drew winners in both individual using it, including All Nippon Airways and ‘team’ categories from among 7800 (ANA). contestants, with flight attendants based outside of Japan winning two out of the For example, starting in 2013, ANA three categories. launched an annual Omotenashi Professional Masters contest for its flight V attendants. The idea is to reward staff who “graciously anticipate customers’ The idea of using omotenashi as a needs before they’re expressed.” marketing tool has now been extended to a campaign launched in North America, The most recent contest, staged in June called ‘Experience Class.’
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Featuring content and a soundtrack created by Japanese-American DJ and music producer Steve Aoki, the campaign explores Japan and Japanese culture in a “unique, authentic way.” This includes content which defines and centres on omotenashi.
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According to ANA, the launch video showcases the “cultural tradition that passengers on ANA can look forward to, including an unparalleled welcome before stepping foot on the plane, cuisine that is artfully crafted by master chefs, premium entertainment, and an attention to service and detail that stays with you
Scott Eastwood featured in a short video about his trip to Tokyo on ANA “They are then visually transported to and his first day in the Japanese capital. Tokyo to explore the modern culture and Meanwhile, Steve Aoki has created five historic landmarks of the mesmerizing Spotify playlists, ranging from ‘Japan’s city.” hottest hits’ to ‘Touchdown in Tokyo.’ long after the flight.
In addition to being available on YouTube, the video opens up in a full screen view when you first click on a special ANA Experience Class micro-site - it is particularly striking if you watch it on a laptop or desktop. The site then contains several subsections, which explores food, fashion and culture (loosely defined, it includes for example “six Tokyo sites that will make your Instagram followers swoon”). In addition to Steve Aoki, content collaborators include actors Zoe Saldana and Scott Eastwood.
CONTENT LED-MARKETING BY ANA In September, we featured ANA on the cover due to its on-going ‘Is Japan Cool’ campaign, which for the past five years has been highlighting different sides of Japan.
We called ‘Is Japan Cool’ one of the best destination websites we’d seen, and applauded ANA for its exceptionally high quality, for the fact that it is informative and interactive and for the fact that ANA is consistently uploading fresh content with different content creators rather than letting it go stale, as some destinations All three collaborators have produced sites do. content on the site showcasing a feature of Japan they particularly liked. For We’d praise ‘Experience Class’ for the example, Zoe Saldana takes readers same reasons. The videos are snackable, on a photo tour of Tokyo, as well as a just the right length to engage and producing a guide to in-flight beauty inform. It seamlessly weaves in the spirit essentials. of ‘omotenashi’ you experience on ANA flights to the spirit of adventure and
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discovery you find when you touch down. The bridge between the two elements doesn’t seem artificial. Experience Class is also a multimedia experience. It brings together words (short articles), images (photo guides), videos and sound (Steve Aoki’s playlists and soundtracks over the video). Most importantly, the content is genuinely interesting. As a result, ANA’s online content packages continually impress. In addition to ‘Is Japan Cool’ and ‘Experience Class’, ANA has also so far carried out 26 athlete interviews for a pre-Tokyo 2020 campaign called ‘Ready for Take-Off.’ As it’s on-going, we will feature Ready for Take-Off in a future issue. However for now, it is congratulations to ANA for being one of our featured campaigns of the month.
KEY TAKE-AWAY You could argue that what ANA does isn’t rocket science. Almost every airline after all produces online content and many have destination micro-sites or promotions. However the fact is, ANA does all this but does it incredibly well. The content is of a high quality, the topics are interesting, the collaborations with influencers and celebrities work, and mentions or promotions of the ANA brand and omotenashi looks natural and not forced. Most importantly, ANA is consistent. While much airline content work revolves around tactical route support, ANA has chosen a theme and stuck to it. More specifically it has decided to own the area of Japanese culture and of experiencing the country. It keeps adding to its microsites, in some cases for years. And this kind of long-term thinking pays off. The airline now has literally hundreds of pieces of (Google indexed) content online that reinforce the fact that ANA = Japan. Indeed, this writer actually started thinking of going to Japan for a trip as a direct result of watching the ANA videos while writing this article.
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FEATURED CAMPAIGN SAY YES TO THE WORLD - LUFTHANSA
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Last month, our cover story was the Lufthansa rebrand, which will see Lufthansa (largely) getting rid of the yellow on its aircraft over the next seven years with the blue becoming much more prominent.
The follow-on from ‘Explore the New’ is another campaign, created by German ad agency Kolle Rebbe, called ‘Say yes to the world.’
Our second featured campaign of the month, Lufthansa says that this is one of Though the rebrand has produced mixed the biggest campaigns to be launched in reactions within the design and aviation its history. communities, we applauded Lufthansa for the way it unveiled the new design FROM PRODUCT TO EXPERIENCE and told the story behind it. This included a tour of aircraft with the new livery Interestingly enough, Lufthansa’s agency around Europe and an ‘Explore the New’ says that the campaign changes the microsite. focus “from top-quality products to
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unforgettable experiences.” That’s noteworthy as Lufthansa has only recently been admitted into the club of airlines who have been awarded five stars by Skytrax, which saw the airline stage a star themed ‘stellar tour’ campaign on
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social media in celebration (which we covered in the January edition). However, according to Kolle Rebe, the emphasis is now on the airline “positioning itself as a partner to anyone who is open
to trying new things and ready to view sentence. It expresses more than just travelling as a rich source of inspiration an attitude though. It is a call to action, within their lives at large.” encouraging people to question their old habits and ways of thinking and be ready Lufthansa’s head of marketing to jump feet first into new and exciting communications Bettina Struve has experiences.’” reinforced this point by saying that: On its own, this theme isn’t unique. ““Say yes to the world” captures a cosmopolitan attitude and a passion A number of airlines already orientate for living life to the fullest in a single their brand strategy around it. For
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example, Russian airline S7 has adopted this approach for a number of years, as seen through a series of high impact campaigns such as ‘Imagine’ and ‘The Best Planet’. Most recently, S7 encouraged people to leave behind the fakery of virtual reality and the digital world and go and experience the world for themselves in a campaign called ‘I am you’ (our campaign of the month for December).
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Similarly, Turkish Airlines launched a campaign during the American Football Super Bowl fronted by US TV doctor, Dr Oz called ‘Five Senses.’ The rationale behind Five Senses sounds a lot like that behind ‘Say yes to the world’: “To discover the unknown, Turkish Airlines encourages their guests to explore their five senses to their fullest. At the end of this new journey, Turkish Airlines aims to inspire the whole world to seek new discoveries.”
A FOCUS ON THE HUMAN ELEMENT campaign, ‘Life Changing Places.’ where OF DISCOVERY Lufthansa challenged travellers to find “which extraordinary place will change As a result, a good test when evaluating your life.” marketing campaigns is this: While ‘Say Yes to the World’ has only just If you took away the name of the brand started, it is so far being articulated in the running it, and slotted in a completely following ways: different brand name but otherwise left the mechanics and creative the same, 1 - A short film and ad - Why do you love would anyone be any wiser? the world? This shows individuals as well as pairs of people sitting down on Bearing that in mind, how is Lufthansa Lufthansa Premium Economy seats in is bringing ‘Say yes to the world’ to different countries including the USA, life?’ and making it different from other Germany, China, Japan and India. experience-led campaigns? They are then asked a series The answer seems to be a focus on of questions around ‘Why experiences and the people who do you love the world.’ experience them. The participants, who include a So while Turkish Airlines ‘Five Senses’ and couple who don’t know each other, a S7’s ‘The best planet’ looks at travel as a mother and daughter, and an African sensory experience with a single narrator migrant in Germany; laugh, make (Dr Oz for Turkish Airlines and Cosmonaut observations on the beauty of life Andrei Borisenko for S7), Lufthansa’s ‘Say and get emotional as they reflect on Yes to the World’ draws upon individual the world and their experiences of it. people and individual stories. It’s a stirring piece of content that In fact, you could argue that ‘Say Yes to speaks to us as people and that you the World’ is a continuum of the 2017 want to watch over and over.
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2-A n augmented reality experience. Starting in Lufthansa’s main Frankfurt and Munich hubs, socalled ‘open seats’ are being installed as part of a tour, allowing people to experience other destinations. As in the ‘Why do you love the world’ ad, the seats are Premium Economy ones.
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According to Lufthansa, people taking part in the experience will find themselves ‘transported’ elsewhere and can witness everything from “a spontaneous jam session in New York to a kung fu lesson with Chinese Shaolin monks.” Lufthansa says that a ‘world tour’ of
4-A Say Yes to the World website. This website takes the form of a spinning globe. Users are asked to place a pin anywhere in the world, and make a statement. For example, placing a pin in Thailand brings up a series of statements where you are asked what you ‘say yes to’ - these statements include experiencing, listening, enjoying, feeling and discovering. If you choose ‘listening to’ you are then presented with another series of statements such as ‘strange sounds’, ‘buskers in the street’ and ‘stories.’ the seats is planned with a stop in New York. After you’ve finally said ‘yes’ to one of those options your pin goes on the 3-A social media campaign using globe and you are invited to share your the #SayYesToTheWorld hashtag. statement on social media. On Instagram for example, Lufthansa has been posting short Though a lot of people appear to have films with the ‘Why do you love put pins in the map, this was to us one the world’ question, as well as element that seemed to fall down a little high impact destination photos. in an otherwise excellent campaign. However, rather than being your First of all it seems to run counter to how standard destination pictures of people behave on social media. famous landmarks or locations, these pictures are not geo-tagged. Using the experiment we ran through, would someone really tweet out the They instead focus on the people statement, “I say YES to listening to and the experience as opposed to the strange sounds in Thailand, Thailand”? place - the location almost seems to (in itself a glitch, given that we declined be secondary. to choose ‘Bangkok’, so it repeated the
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country twice), to their social media friends and followers?
KEY TAKE-AWAY
This is especially since the draft tweet we were presented with didn’t include a hashtag or any other kind of context, other than a link back to the site.
The Lufthansa campaign is effective for a number of reasons. Yes it leads on the experience of travel as other airline campaigns do, but Lufthansa’s campaign is person centred. What does it mean to you as a person to experience something new when you go abroad.
Or indeed, a question designed to get a response. For example, why not include a follow-on line of ‘what would you say yes to?’, or even a competition element ‘tell us what experience you say yes to, to win flights’
It both builds on the rebrand but is also a logical progression from earlier campaigns such as Life Changing Places. As a result, it fits in with what it has done before.
Secondly there was little follow through. So going back to our choice of ‘strange sounds in Thailand’: HOW do we now listen to these strange sounds? Play us some strange sounds! What indeed is a ‘strange sound’? Who or what makes them? It is true that on navigating the site further you can access a series of videos and images under select Lufthansa destinations, but as a user we felt we’d be left hanging at this point. Other than the elements mentioned, Say Yes To the World will also feature in OOH advertising, in email newsletters and in the Lufthansa in-flight magazine.
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The use of social media images that aren’t recognisably about any one specific destination is particularly interesting. Posting a series of pictures about (say) the Taj Mahal or the Great Wall of China is not only what everyone else does, it would also shift attention away from the overall message of the human and emotional dimension. The one element which doesn’t work as well as it should is, as we’ve mentioned, the website. There is no real incentive for people to share or talk about it and no follow-through from getting people to choose experiences to letting them find out more about them. However, it is early days and the campaign is of course constantly evolving.
AIR CANADA - OUR HOME
In last month’s edition we featured United’s sponsorship of the US Winter Olympics Team, where both the athletes and United employees were portrayed as superheroes in a marketing campaign. Subsequent reports showed that in support of that campaign, United ended up pumping out 40 pieces of Olympics related content onto its social channels, in particular to Facebook where the airline has 1.1 million followers.
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Another airline that ran Olympics-themed marketing was Air Canada, which has traditionally been the official carrier of the Canadian Olympics team. Winter Sports such as Ice Hockey of course play a big role in Canadian life, with Canada traditionally enjoying greater success in the Winter than in the Summer Olympics. As a result, Air Canada’s campaign was on a suitably big scale.
An ad titled “Our Time” was broadcast during the opening ceremonies in PyeongChang. Narrated by Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds, the ad celebrates, according to Air Canada, “the values of multiculturalism, compassion and equality that make Canada a role model for the world.”
AdWeek wondered whether ‘Our Home’, was in part meant as a reaction to the “increasing coarseness” of Donald Trump’s America, with the airline having previously invited Americans unhappy with Trump’s election in 2016 to “Test Drive Canada.” According to Andy Shibata, Air Canada’s managing director of brand, ‘Our Home’ was one of the best performing pieces of social media content in the airline’s history, netting 17+ million views across its social channels.
Our Time was a follow-on to another Ryan Reynolds ad. In late December, Air Canada released ‘Our Home’, where the theme was “compassion, teamwork and diversity.” For example, in one scene a man gives up a seat in the bus to a woman in a headscarf, while in another Both Air Canada ads are using the ‘Fly a young man in women’s clothing is seen the Flag’ tagline, which first saw the light removing his eye lashes and wig. of day during the 2016 Rio Olympics.
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Canada, Go!’ livery, and served Poutine at Canada House in PyeongChang. #CANWEFLYNOWPLEASE Another airline which ended up receiving extensive Olympics coverage, though not by its own choosing, was Lufthansa. Team USA Skier Lindsey Vonn and her dog Lucy were delayed for six hours in Munich on the way to Seoul because of a paperwork issue to do with the A340 she was flying on. Vonn texted sports network ESPN and then live tweeted the whole experience, which included observations on why she was single, a comment on a passenger trying to hide the fact that he was taking her photo, and a tweet calling out Lufthansa itself with the hashtag #canweflynowplease, which received 1200 likes and 170 replies.
In addition to ‘Our Home’ and ‘Our Time’, Air Canada’s Olympic campaign included an OOH campaign at Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary Airports featuring figure skaters Patrick Chan, flag bearers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir; hockey player Marie-Philip Poulin; freestyle skier Lufthansa did reply citing a ‘technical (halfpipe) Cassie Sharpe; and Paralympic issue’, which arguably was a little bit of Para Nordic skier Mark Arendz. a boilerplate response and there was a missed opportunity to take a more Air Canada additionally painted a new human - and perhaps given the tone of Boeing 777-300, which served as the Vonn’s tweets - a more self-depreciating Team Canada charter in special ‘Go response.
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KEY TAKE-AWAY It is hard to get cut-through during a major worldwide event such as the Olympics, but in different ways both United (who we featured in February) and Air Canada succeeded. The success of ‘Our Home’ and ‘Our Time’ on social media shows that the theme of patriotism mixed with attributes such as teamwork, diversity and compassion struck a chord with Air Canada’s domestic audience. Ad Week additionally praised Air Canada for using Ryan Reynolds and sticking to a ‘low key’ and ‘earnest’ delivery devoid of bombastic flag waving.
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AIR NEW ZEALAND - EMOJI JOURNEY
Research shows that more than 90% of people online now incorporate emojis into texts, instant messages and emails. In fact, according to Instagram, after Apple developed an emoji keyboard for iOS devices, it led to half of all comments and captions on the social network being emoji-based.
their marketing. The latest brand to get on board with emojis is, in the aviation sector, Air New Zealand, with its #EmojiJourney.
#EmojiJourney works as follows: Air New Zealand has created a series of social media posts around the Emoji Journey As a result, brands and organisations from theme. Users respond with their own Pepsi to the Hillary Clinton Presidential emojis. Air New Zealand then creates campaign have used emojis as part of a map of New Zealand based on those
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emojis with suggestions on where to go Zealand customises the map for you. and what to experience. Though media coverage talks about Alternatively, you can go direct into the Air New Zealand trying to appeal to interactive map, which is hosted on a web millennials, Air New Zealand in fact says page, and choose a series of emojis at that is has created this campaign to the top of the page, after which Air New reach millennials, but also the age group
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underneath - Generation Z. That’s sensible, the oldest members of Generation Z were (depending on how you define them) born in the 1990s and so are now well into adulthood. They have never known a time when it wasn’t possible to be online, and they are also more numerous as a population group than baby boomers. The campaign was created for Air New Zealand by agency, ‘True’, who in their rationale behind the campaign called emojis ‘the only true global language.’ So far, engagement with the campaign seems to be good. According to Union Metrics, the hashtag is achieving around 150k impressions on Twitter a week.
KEY TAKE-AWAY Often when you ask people to go through too much effort online in a competition or promotion, they don’t bother. That means it is tough to come up with something eye catching and different, which is also easy enough for people to take part in. Air New Zealand has succeeded. The barrier to entry is actually very low, all people have to do is type in a series emojis, which takes literally seconds. However, at the same time, the mechanic of using those emojis to create maps is also different (certainly no airline or even travel company we are aware of has done this). Most importantly, the experience is personalised, you feel you are getting something tailored specifically for you. Finally, Air New Zealand is using a visual language that, as its ad agency says is global (you don’t need English language fluency to understand emojis), and appeals to two important demographics - millennials and (the older portion of) Generation Z.
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EASYJET - SICK BAG POETRY
Last April we featured Delta as our coverstory for it’s ‘tray table art’ project, where illustrators customised the back of tray tables on a Boeing 767. At the time we suggested airlines look at opportunities for using other ‘dead space’ for marketing promotions - for example the back of sick bags.
to coincide with Valentine’s Day. easyJet launched what it claimed was the first ever poetry competition that must be submitted on an in-flight sick bag.
Passengers were given the chance to win a pair of return flights in exchange for writing a poem on the back of a sick bag, taking a photo of it and uploading In February easyJet did exactly that with it to social media by the end of February a poetry competition that was launched using #lovesicksonnets.
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Rather than a wheeze dreamt up by the marketing department, easyJet claimed that the inspiration for the project actually came from passengers themselves. The airline said it found that a lot of passengers had been spending time on its European flights writing verses and messages on the back of sick bags, which then led to the competition.
angle did find a receptive audience in the British, international and marketing press including The Sun, The Herald, Metro, the Huffington Post and Campaign.
Lots of consumer facing brands try to dream up stunts or promotions around Valentine’s Day, but few succeed in cutting through the noise. easyJet however hit upon an unusual angle that meant it did That’s a claim that’s not possible to prove get extensive media exposure. Given that either way, but when easyJet launched the actual cost of the competition will have the competition on February 1st, that been very little, the modest investment in
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terms of time spent creating the tactic off the impression of a brand that doesn’t paid off handsomely. take itself too seriously. We just wonder if easyJet could have made much more At the same time, when we looked at of this. easyJet’s social media, we were surprised at how little follow through there was on the airline’s channels - especially as this was a social-led campaign. For example on Facebook, where it has 1.5 million fans, easyJet only mentioned the competition once - on February 2nd, when it was launched. After that there was nothing more about it, even though easyJet did feature a man proposing to his girlfriend on a flight to Rome on 14 February. Our first reaction was that this might have been because few people were entering, but that wasn’t the case. Engagement was actually very good. A look at Instagram shows that there are 250+ examples of ‘sick bag poetry’ using easyJet’s designated hashtag of #lovesicksonnets, with many more on Twitter. easyJet came up with a really good idea. It was different, an actual first as opposed to another ‘me too’ tactic, and you can see why a brand like easyJet would do something like this: It is fun, it involves passengers, it appeals to a more youthful audience and it gives
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KEY TAKE-AWAY In a campaign of this nature, it is worth looking at how you can maximise the value of your investment and increase engagement, especially on social media. This was a great campaign, but arguably it could have gone further. Here are just a few things easyJet could have done: It could have featured a poem of the week. It could have had content giving tips about how to write the perfect poem (possibly with guest posts from poets) - possibly in the form of short snackable videos. It could have also offered up smaller weekly prizes (e.g. swag or discount vouchers) as an incentive. And as well as featuring regular poems it could have created content around the people behind it. Who wrote the poem? Where were they going? What was the inspiration? Where do they hope to go if they win the prize? After all, if you have several hundred entries like this, you actually have several hundred content opportunities.
EMIRATES- BADR SALEH
Recently Saudi national airline Saudia announced that it would be launching a campaign to turn itself into a five star airline. Saudia of course operates in a challenging environment with many Saudis preferring
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to fly to Abu Dhabi or Dubai and then Badr Saleh, who has been ranked as one continue on long-haul with Etihad or of the most influential young Arabs in Emirates. the Middle East and has his own show on satellite broadcaster MBC. The two UAE Airlines (and Qatar Airways before the 2017 regional crisis) in turn The campaign takes the form of a series of heavily target the Saudi market and try videos, which Emirates claims “addresses and lure Saudi travellers away. the pain points of Saudi travellers.” The most recent example is Emirates, which operates 84 flights a week to and from four Saudi cities. In February, Emirates launched a marketing campaign specifically aimed at Saudi Arabia
Though Emirates of course does not mention Saudia by name, it seems to be suggesting that these ‘pain points’ have in the past been features of Saudi airlines.
After all, in its statement Emirates says that That campaign is fronted by comedian “dated inflight movies and programmes,
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keeping children entertained onboard, great lengths to try and beg or talk their and missing their favourite programmes way into an upgrade. while travelling” is something that “almost every Saudi traveller can relate to.” The message was that when flying Emirates you don’t need to make a The videos all set in a bare room with a fool of yourself at the check-in desk, bunch of office chairs arranged as if they as compared to other economy class were seats in airline rows. cabins, Emirates is already an upgrade. In the first video, Badr Saleh and a friend are left on the flight after all the other passengers have left thanks to being glued to the endless in-flight entertainment on Emirates. The second video shows the “daunting experience” of flying with children with Saleh explaining how he has to apologise when flying with kids but now thanks to Emirates keeping them entertained that is no longer the case.
KEY TAKE-AWAY Emirates has used a regional celebrity who will appeal to Saudi audiences for this campaign, but actually the creative they chose would work well anywhere.
Meanwhile the third video in the series promotes Emirates’ ‘Live TV’ feature. Instead of missing a football match, Badr Saleh is able to enjoy it right from his seat back TV.
Few people ever set foot in a premium cabin (other than on their way to the back of the plane) and the message of a better class of economy would resonate in just about any region of the world.
What’s interesting is that the campaign specifically promotes Emirates’ economy class product. This follows the ‘Upgrade Your Airline’ campaign we featured last month, where Emirates poked fun at passengers of other airlines going to
That is the key feature of this campaign. The messaging is consistent with other activity Emirates is doing (in this case to promote Economy), it has just been given a local face and tailored for local audiences.
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QANTAS AND EASYJET - PILOT RECRUITMENT PROGRAMMES
Globally, airlines have a recruitment is Qantas, which in late February problem when it comes to pilots. announced the creation of the ‘Qantas Group Pilot Academy.’ Training company CAE’s annual report into the industry last year found that 70 Starting in 2019, the academy will initially new pilots a day will be needed for the train around 100 pilots a year for direct next ten years to sustain expansion and entry into the Qantas Group, including demand. Jetstar and regional carrier, QantasLink. However, the programme could One big problem is that pilots nearing potentially expand to 500 pilots annually. retirement age are not being replaced. A University of North Dakota’s Aviation According to Qantas, the result could be Department report found that the ‘pilot the Southern Hemisphere’s largest flight deficit’ will soar as a result, while CAE academy. estimates that 50% of the pilots who will fly the world’s commercial aircraft in 10 This is a marketing report - is the Qantas years have not yet started to train. announcement a marketing campaign? In a sense it is, and Qantas has produced As a result, airlines worldwide are starting both a nicely designed landing page to create and publicly promote pilot (which for now just includes basic info recruitment campaigns. One example and a form) as well as a short social media
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video to launch the initiative, which on receiving end of it when even one pilot Facebook has, at time of writing, notched calling in sick can have a knock on effect up over 200k views. on flight disruption. Initiatives like this also matter from a PR point of view, with the Qantas announcement being extensively covered in both the Australian and international travel / aviation media.
Then there is a corporate and social responsibility message of being seen to be training the next generation (even if Qantas and other airlines have an interest in doing so).
That’s because awareness about the pilot Finally, by showcasing Qantas as a good shortage is growing, especially among employer, it is strengthening its brand frequent travellers who have been on the value.
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EASYJET GIRLGUIDING BADGE
The Qantas initiative is named after legendary Australian female aviator, Nancy Bird Walton, with Qantas boss telling business leaders last November that the airline would ‘up the ante’ in recruiting more women.
One area many airlines are trying to focus on is increasingly the proportion of female pilots, which right now sits at under 5% worldwide. The Qantas Group Pilot Academy announcement follows a commitment by the airline to have at Another airline which has focused on least a 50% female cadet intake within a female pilot recruitment is British LCC decade.
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easyJet, with its Amy Johnson initiative, which has the target that 20% of new cadet pilots in 2020 should be female. In early March, easyJet further highlighted its commitment to getting more women on board as pilots by launching a badge with youth organisation girl guides. 200,000 girls aged seven to ten will have the chance to qualify for the badge by challenging themselves to think of 40 things that fly and putting their engineering skills to the test. This involves creating their own aircraft experiments with different building materials, structures and launch techniques. A Girl Guide study found that becoming a pilot was named as a dream job by sevento 10-year-old girls, while three quarters feel encouraged by female role models doing jobs that they may one day want to do. As a result, the easyJet / girl guide campaign has current easyJet women pilots talking about their careers.
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KEY TAKE-AWAY There are good brand, as well as commercial reasons, to be seen as being proactive in recruiting and training the next generation of pilots. The Qantas Group Pilot Academy has ambitious targets with up to 500 pilots being trained each year. It sounds serious and real, rather than a PR-led initiative. At the same time, Qantas’ commitment to increasing female pilot recruitment and its ambitious 50% target for cadets is welcome and positions the company as progressive and modern. Meanwhile, by partnering with the girl guides, easyJet is thinking ahead to the next 10-20 years. The badge is a nice initiative and certainly one that no airline has (to the best of our knowledge) done before. It gets across the company’s commitment to having more women piloting its aircraft in a much more userfriendly way compared to if it had simply issued a press release.
QATAR AIRWAYS - #FIRSTIN1000
On 23 February, Qatar Airways took delivery of its first A350-1000 from the Airbus HQ in Toulouse, France and created a launch event around it.
Meanwhile Qantas has created a slick and interactive dedicated Dreamliner landing page, and last year ran a campaign highlighting the fact that from this month, a 787-9 will be flying non-stop from Perth Qatar Airways is of course not the first to London Heathrow (we covered the airline to run marketing around new campaign and the ‘Feels like Home’ ads aircraft coming into its fleet. in the June 2017 edition). For example, Thomson Airways in the UK heavily pre-promoted the fact that it was going to be the first British airline to fly the Dreamliner for months, and had ‘naming competitions’ where social media fans were able to name the new planes.
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However while a number of airlines have promoted the introduction of new aircraft into the fleet and even the first flight, fewer have taken a step back to look at how you can make more of out of the actual delivery flight, when the aircraft leaves the Airbus or Boeing HQ.
This was the thinking behind Qatar Airways #Firstin1000 mini-campaign. The campaign kicked off with an event in Toulouse which was broadcast on social media. In attendance were AV geeks bloggers such as the London Spotter, the Points Guy, Sam Chui and The Airline and Aviation blog. The aviation bloggers were invited to a dinner, there was a presentation and speeches and then the aircraft took off to Doha - with the bloggers on board.
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Also on-board was Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker, who made himself available for video interviews with the bloggers. The A350-1000 did a fly-over over Doha, which was captured on Qatar Airways social media channels, before landing. Inviting specialist airline and aviation bloggers and making them the focus of the flight from Toulouse was smart for a number of reasons.
First of all for AV geeks, a new aircraft being delivered and a visit to the Airbus factory is more than just a run of the mill trip. They were genuinely excited about this - it was probably the highlight of their year so far.
but the excitement levels were simply much different. That’s because they have to appeal to and speak the language of their readers, most of whom won’t be frequent flyers who jet off somewhere every month. Many if not most readers of a travel section of a That meant they produced lots and lots newspaper will fly once or twice a year. of content. Videos, photos, and posts - and shared them extensively on their And when they do book, the fact that social media channels as well as writing airline A has new A350s and airline B still articles on their actual blog. flies older A310s, doesn’t really come into it as a decision making factor. NEW AIRCRAFT HELPS STRENGTHEN THE BRAND IATA studies have shown that for the average consumer when it comes Would the same have happened with a to actually buying a ticket the most normal travel journalist? Travel writers are important factor by far is price (43%), aware of the difference between different with the schedule (21%) ranking second types of aircraft and they might well have and the frequent flyer programme (13%) been interested in looking around inside far behind in third place.
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KEY TAKE-AWAY Work with AV geeks and spotters. It pays off. They in some cases have a large audience that rivals conventional media outlets. To take one example, Sam Chui has 75k email newsletter subscribers, 136k Instagram followers and 35k Facebook fans. That’s in addition to the people who visit his blog.
However, while having a new kind of aircraft may not drive direct sales from ordinary consumers (as opposed to AV geeks), it does drive sales indirectly by helping to build an airline’s brand. The same IATA research found that when it comes to an airline brand perception, the aircraft quality and interior was the second most important factor cited by 66% of respondents (On time performance was top with 75%).
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That may not include that many leisure travellers who fly once a year, but it will include a lot of frequent flyers who spend a lot of money on airline travel. They talk about aviation all the time, it is their life, that means they churn out much more content than your average travel blogger or journalist who would be on board. And that content lives on online. It will be found via Google or Bing search for months and years after it’s been posted and published.
VIRGIN ATLANTIC - VALENTINES HEART
In the earlier easyJet article, we made the point that while lots of airlines try out Valentines stunts or campaigns, not that many manage to get cut through in a very crowded space where everyone is vying for attention.
VIRGIN ATLANTIC LOVE SUITES Recently Virgin Atlantic took delivery of four A330-200 aircraft, which are actually planes from the now bankrupt Air Berlin.
Getting four second hand planes shouldn’t easyJet succeeded through its poetry really make news outside the specialist campaign by rolling out something aviation press, but Virgin Atlantic different and eye catching. For different succeeded into turning into a media event. reasons, so did Virgin Atlantic, when one of its aircraft “drew” a heart off the coast of That’s because Virgin announced that Cornwall in the UK. the aircraft, which were given names like ‘Strawberry Fields’ and ‘Daydream Believer’
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would have so-called ‘Love Suites’ in its VALENTINES TEST FLIGHT Upper Class cabin. On Valentine’s Day, one of the ex Air Berlin The press lapped it up. Love seats! Trust A330s was taken on a test flight across that cheeky Sir Richard Branson to come South and South West England. The up with something like that! aircraft (called ‘Honky Tonk woman’ then ended up ‘drawing’ a heart shape in the Or as Metro put it, “it’s almost like Virgin Irish Sea, in an operation which had been Atlantic want people to have sex on their planned days earlier. planes.” The drawing was of course the flight path, In fact, as the Points Guy pointed out, with the heart ending up being 60 miles the truth was a little less racy. The so- long. The flight crew only had two hours called Love Suite is actually just the old to draw the heart, and they were aware ‘honeymoon’ style centre seats already that they were being watched and tracked installed by Air Berlin. by AV Geeks on website and app Flight
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Radar 24 - which was of course the point, plane enthusiasts on social media are likely to share something like this. The result was extensive media coverage, with Google news registering over 4800 articles worldwide. This is not the first time an aircraft has drawn a shape with its flight path. At Christmas, Airbus had an A380 eventually destined for Emirates ‘draw’ a Christmas tree over Europe, while in August, Boeing had one of its 787s draw a plane shape over the USA. OTHER AIRLINE VALENTINE’S PROMOTIONS Other airlines also ran Valentine’s promotions but for the most part they took the form of sales or more basic promotions. For example, Emirates gave everyone flying out of Dubai heart shaped chocolates., while Alaska Airlines posted a blog post about two flight attendants who had met in training and were now getting married. Delta meanwhile used Valentine’s Day to, just like every year “give a big hug” to its 80,000 staff through its annual bonus / profit share programme, which for most employees will see them get the equivalent of more than 10% of their gross annual pay.
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KEY TAKE-AWAY The airlines we’ve profiled have got it right when it comes to something crowded like Valentine’s Day. Either keep it simple and do something that passengers will appreciate (like a chocolate give-away by Emirates) or run a sale (like Cebu Pacific). Or, think big and cut through the noise, which is what Virgin Atlantic managed to do. Virgin did so without spending a huge amount on promotions or advertising. The A330 that ‘drew’ the heart was due to make a test flight anyway, all the airline did was sort out the logistics and divert it slightly over the Irish Sea.
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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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