Air Canada-Our Home

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.

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.”

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 a young man in women’s clothing is seen removing his eye lashes and wig.

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.

Both Air Canada ads are using the ‘Fly the Flag’ tagline, which first saw the light of day during the 2016 Rio Olympics.

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 (halfpipe) Cassie Sharpe; and Paralympic Para Nordic skier Mark Arendz

Air Canada additionally painted a new Boeing 777-300, which served as the Team Canada charter in special ‘Go 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.

Lufthansa did reply citing a ‘technical issue’, which arguably was a little bit of a boilerplate response and there was a missed opportunity to take a more human - and perhaps given the tone of Vonn’s tweets - a more self-depreciating response.

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.