Emirates-Badr Saleh

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 to fly to Abu Dhabi or Dubai and then continue on long-haul with Etihad or Emirates.

The two UAE Airlines (and Qatar Airways before the 2017 regional crisis) in turn heavily target the Saudi market and try and lure Saudi travellers away.

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

The campaign is fronted by comedian Badr Saleh, who has been ranked as one of the most influential young Arabs in the Middle East and has his own show on satellite broadcaster MBC.

The campaign takes the form of a series of videos, which Emirates claims “addresses the pain points of Saudi travellers.”

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 “dated inflight movies and programmes,

keeping children entertained onboard, and missing their favourite programmes while travelling” is something that “almost every Saudi traveller can relate to.”

The videos all set in a bare room with a bunch of office chairs arranged as if they were seats in airline rows.

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.

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.

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 great lengths to try and beg or talk their way into an upgrade.

The message was that when flying Emirates you don’t need to make a fool of yourself at the check-in desk, as compared to other economy class cabins, Emirates is already an upgrade.

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.

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.

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.