American Airlines-Bonnie Award

AMERICAN AIRLINES - BONNIE AWARD

“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 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 in January, she in fact received her prize at the 2018 Spirit Awards on March 6th.

With the awards taking place in Los Angeles, American Airlines commissioned a large mural to go up in Venice Beach. The mural features two angel wings in American Airlines colours, and was painted by Colette Miller who since 2012 has been running the ‘Global Angel Wings Project.’

This has involved Colette Miller producing angel wings art worldwide, with the aim of reminding ‘humanity that we are the angels of this earth.’

The award, Chloe Zhao as the winner and the mural have been extensively featured on American Airlines’ social media channels.

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.

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.’

Instead, American Airlines has really invested in this initiative and in its partnership with the Film Independent Spirit awards to make this work.

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 opens with Bonnie’s story as a pilot and then seamlessly moves to a selection of female directors talking about the importance of inclusiveness and some of the challenges they’ve faced in a male dominated industry.

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.

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.