AIRLINE MARKETING MONTHLY June 2018
SPECIAL WORLD CUP EDITION AIRLINES AND THE ROYAL WEDDING
Welcome to the June 2018 edition of Airline Marketing Monthly by SimpliFlying. We’d also like to welcome the many new readers that we have this month! Every month we showcase up to ten airline (and occasionally airport) marketing campaigns and provide commentary around them. This month, we have given the magazine more of a distinct and topical theme. With the Football / Soccer World Cup shortly about to start in Russia, we’ve devoted almost half the articles in this issue to football-related airline campaigns. This includes our chosen cover story, Icelandair’s “Team Iceland Stopover.” An initiative which is still ongoing, this involves travellers applying to take part in Stopovers as chosen by Icelandic Footballers. This includes everything from a fitness training session and hike in the Icelandic countryside, to winning chances to join the famous Icelandic team supporters’ club “Tólfan” (The twelfth man), which best known for popularising the “HÚH!” chant and clap. In addition to this monthly magazine, you can get a daily dose of analysis and commentary on aviation issues from SimpliFlying founder, Shashank Nigam, in the ‘SimpliLive’ show. If you have any suggestions, or indeed if you’d like to alert us to a future campaign that we should be covering, please do email me - dirk@simpliflying.com Dirk Singer, dirk@simpliflying.com
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INSIDE WORLD CUP CAMPAIGNS Icelandair - Team Iceland Stopover - 4 Qatar Airways - Dancing in the Streets - 9 Lufthansa - WIE IN RIO (AS IN RIO) - 13 Copa Airlines - The Dream that Came True - 16 Other campaigns - Airlines and the Royal Wedding - 20 Air Baltic - Beat this precision - 25 Delta - Delta Uniform Safety Video - 29 easyJet - The flying car - 33 Joon - Paper Plane - 37 Virgin Atlantic - Upgrade Face - 41 Highlights from our Miami Lab - 45 Who we are - and an introduction to Visible - 50
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SPECIAL WORLD CUP EDITION TEAM ICELAND STOPOVER
ICELANDAIR
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We’ve featured Icelandair several times in the past for initiatives that seek to persuade transatlantic travellers to use Iceland as more than just a transit point and spend several days in country.
bookings by 30%. The latest Stopover campaign ties into the World Cup and the fact that the Icelandic national team has again defied expectations in qualifying for the tournament. The Icelandic team last made headlines in the 2016 European Championships, when it beat one of the giants of European football, England, and reached the Quarter Finals.
For example, one of the most high profile and creative airline campaigns of 2016 was “Stopover Buddy”, where you could choose an Icelandair member of staff including the CEO - to show you around Iceland. According to Marketing Week, this one campaign boosted website Unlike previous Stopover experiences,
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which lasted 48 hours, each Team Iceland Finally, the airline is giving away ten Stopover experience lasts all of 90 chances to join the Icelandic team minutes. supporters’ club “Tólfan (The twelfth man).” You apply for one of these experiences on a micro-site, and while they are in theory This group of supporters popularised football themed, they involve much more the so-called “Viking Clap” (or “HÚH!”), than just hitting a ball around a pitch. which you hear at matches involving the national side, and which video game Upcoming experiences in June include maker EA has just added into its official the chance to attend a local Reykjavík FIFA 2018 game. match, where you learn to ‘support like an Icelander’, while the “Goal in One” In a short video introducing the stopover experience on 25 June actually involves concept, team captain Aron Gunnarsson hitting nine holes of golf in 90 minutes. explains that a “lot can happen in 90 minutes….so make the most of it.”
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In fact, a particularly nice angle is that the favourite geothermal areas at Laugarvatn different team members actually chose Fontana, where passengers can unwind the 90 minute experiences themselves. like a pro, enjoying the geothermal baths, sauna and lake for a swim.” For example, the May experiences included a trip to a Geothermal spa, which Meanwhile a hiking trip, which combined Icelandair explained as follows: hiking with fitness training, was developed by International female star Dagný “Birkir Bjarnason knows that downtime Brynjarsdóttir and relaxation is a key part of training too. He’s inviting passengers to one of his
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This focus on the individual team members, as well as the team itself, is a good way to go. It personalises and humanises the whole campaign. In fact, looking beyond the World Cup, here are a few more examples of how that can be done. 1 - Aeroflot recently celebrated its 95th anniversary. Aeroflot is also the sponsor of Manchester United, so it gave a group of players the challenge of decorating a birthday cake in under four minutes.
KEY TAKE-AWAY This is a great campaign, that successfully ties together the main (non political) news story of the moment (the football World Cup) with one of Icelandair’s commercial goals - trying to persuade more passengers to stop over in Iceland. The fact that the 90 minute stopovers are limited, and that you have to apply for them, gives the whole campaign a feeling of exclusivity. Meanwhile linking the players with each experience gives it a more interesting story than if the marketing team or another group of corporate HQ people had come up with them.
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2 - One of the most popular videos involving the English Premier League team Arsenal, is one made by Emirates where recently departed manager Arsene Wenger and former captain Per Mertesacker engage in a quick fire round of questions. This five minute video, made by Emirates (the team sponsor) last year, isn’t flashy. It just shows the two of them having a chat and asking each other everything from the last book they read to whether they prefer a beach or city break. It’s also received almost a million views. 3 - The principle works for smaller airlines and sponsorships too. For example, take a look at this video made by English Rugby team Bath Rugby for regional airline flybmi, where groups of players “act out” different destinations the airline flies to from its Bristol base.
SPECIAL WORLD CUP EDITION DANCING IN THE STREET
QATAR AIRWAYS
Not only is Qatar the host of the 2022 tournament, Qatar Airways is FIFA’s airline partner, giving it the right to use World Cup branding in its marketing campaigns. As a result, Qatar Airways has come up with something big to mark both the tournament and its sponsorship. In particular, the airline enlisted US singer and songwriter Nicole Scherzinger, who
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is also a judge on the (US / UK) reality TV show X-Factor to re-record the classic song ‘Dancing in the Street.’ Dancing in the Street, was first released as a single by Martha and the Vandellas in 1964. Nicole Scherzinger’s interpretation of the classic is the latest in a whole series of covers, with David Bowie & Mick Jagger, Van Halen and Latina pop singer “Myra” all having recorded their own versions of the song.
According to Qatar Airways, the Nicole together from around the world for this Scherzinger re-release and video celebration of football.” celebrate the “universal language of football.” The video itself starts with Qatar Airways staff dancing and lip-syncing to the song, “We want fans to feel the fun-filled while showing passengers to their seats. vibe that we have created with our new commercial”, said Qatar Airways Senior It then shows a series of scenes worldwide, Vice President Marketing and Corporate including the following: Communications, Ms. Salam Al Shawa. A British Dad being given the eye roll “Our goal is to inspire people to dance, by his daughter for tapping along to the dream and be happy as they come song while doing the ironing, some office
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workers doing “keepy uppy” by their desks, a group of Spanish school boys playing in a sun-drenched town square, an African lady in front of a market fruit stall while a man with a sack on his head walks past, and a procession of flagwaving fans dancing to their seats while Scherzinger sings. Clearly this is a big budget production and Nicole Scherzinger’s involvement has resulted in a lot of exposure for the airline. The video on Facebook has (at time of writing) been viewed 13 million+ times, with over 16,000 shares.
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It’s also been covered extensively in entertainment and travel publications, with music industry title Billboard calling the ad, “ebullient.” Most of the coverage around the ad has been positive but a few commentators have pointed out the cultural stereotyping in the video. For example, writing on the website of Australian TV network “Nine”, Sammy Stewart called it “a goldmine of ethnic stereotypes….while we’re sure the airline meant well, this 60 second “celebration” of cultures and sport is hard not to squirm through.”
mark a bit. The Australian journalist who talked about stereotypes, in particular around the African market scene in the video, does have a point.
KEY TAKE-AWAY “Dancing in the Street” is a suitably big campaign that ties into the fact that the World Cup is, along with the Olympics, the world’s largest sporting event. The airline has pulled out all the stops in shooting the video. For example, the cinematographer they used, Tim Maurice-Jones, was involved in movies such as Snatch, Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and Kick Ass. As a result, the video has a very strong celebratory and happy tone about it, and it also very much gets across that a love for football is something that people worldwide can share in. However we also think it misses the
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It also has a very generic “feel good”aura about it, in the sense that this is the kind of thing Coca Cola or Disney could make. Yes, the spot included dancing and singing staff and planes flying overhead. But if you swapped the cabin crew in the film with people driving Coca Cola trucks and put a Coke logo on the video, it would 100% still work. It doesn’t say, “only Qatar Airways can do that.” For a different creative treatment, see the next article where we talk about Lufthansa’s World Cup video. Though a controversy around the location (it was filmed in the Ukraine but was supposed to show Russia) meant it ultimately had to be pulled, for us it worked better as a piece of airline marketing as it told a story, which Lufthansa is an integral part of.
SPECIAL WORLD CUP EDITION WIE IN RIO
LUFTHANSA
Qatar Airways has come up with German airport looking at the departure something feel-good and safe. One board showing a Moscow flight. airline which did run into controversy with a World Cup film though is Lufthansa. They then start daydreaming, saying that they want to celebrate the same way as Lufthansa’s ad agency Kolle Rebbe filmed they did in Brazil. a video called “Wie in Rio” (as in Rio), which showed two German football fans However instead of Brazil, images of determined to have the same experiences Russia start coming into their heads. For that they did in 2014 in Brazil. example, when they say they want to celebrate in the same way they see the The ad starts with the fans standing at a vision of a Russian vodka bar.
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Similarly when they talk about hitting the beach after each match just like they did in Brazil, the video cuts to a man with a beard catching fish by a river on a grey day. The ad then comes to the punch-line, as it were. The two look at a Lufthansa plane in “Fanhansa” livery and they agree that at the very least they will be flying the same way to the World Cup in 2018 as they did in 2014.
Russia in a territorial dispute. The resulting social media outcry meant that Lufthansa apologised and pulled the video from its social media channels (though you can still see it here):
“In the first comments and reactions we noticed that in this specific case that this video hurt the feelings of some viewers. We deeply regret this and apologize officially for this. That is why Lufthansa had removed the video from all social So far so good, but there is one problem. media platforms already during this The scenes about Russia were partially weekend.” (NB, Weekend of 3 June) filmed in the Ukraine, which is locked with
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KEY TAKE-AWAY Let’s get the obvious point out of the way first: “Wie in Rio” shows the need to carefully research everything from locations, to actors to the soundtrack to make sure it won’t cause controversy. However, we didn’t include “Wie in Rio” to make that point. We included it because the actual creative treatment seems to us to get it right - the location issues aside, we like it. In the previous piece we talked about
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Qatar Airways “Dancing in the Streets” being perhaps too much of a generic feel-good piece with too much going on. Lufthansa however has concentrated on a tighter narrative involving two characters. It is light-hearted and at times funny, it tells a story that fans can relate to and Lufthansa is part and parcel of that story. The message is - these two guys will be having these experiences because of Lufthansa, which will get them to Russia. It’s just a shame that an avoidable mistake means this video won’t be aired
SPECIAL WORLD CUP EDITION THE DREAM THAT CAME TRUE
COPA AIRLINES
Qatar Airways wasn’t the only airline to together with a group of Panamanian celebrate the World Cup with a song, artists to record - “Sube La Marea” (the Copa Airlines has done the same. dream that came true) Copa has for the past 14 years been the According to Billboard magazine: official team carrier of Panama, which will for the first time be participating in the “Brothers Ricardo and Alberto Gaitan tournament. wrote the song, which reclaims Panama’s reggaetón legacy and honors its To celebrate this, the airline has come traditional genres, as well as Panamanian
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artists’ vocal prowess. “Los Rabanes, Sammy and Sandra Sandoval, Osvaldo Ayala and Ingrid de Icaza are among the other performers featured on the song proclaiming Panama’s trip to the 2018 Russia World Cup “the dream that came true.”
The team itself was given a send off at Tocumen International Airport on June 2nd, by Copa and the Panamanian Football Federation, with the team standing in front of an aircraft that Copa Airlines had dedicated for the team’s use in 2015.
The song does not mention the airline in the lyrics, and so the branding is subtle and makes it more likely to be shared. It can also be found on Spotify, where it has (at time of writing) had a respectable 40k listens.
At the airport, a video was played of all the tours of the Panamanian national team since 1976, before the team flew to New York, en route to Norway (where it will have practice matches) and finally Russia.
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OTHER WORLD CUP CAMPAIGNS
Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport held a trophy presentation ceremony, featuring Some aviation brands will no doubt unveil the actual World Cup, and former World World Cup themed campaigns over June, Cup stars. which we will cover in the next issue. However, others that we’ve spotted so far Meanwhile, also in Russia, Ural Airlines has include the following: just published a World Cup celebration video showing its (female) cabin crew
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holding footballs while aircraft pass EgyptAir similarly has an aircraft with overhead. a special World Cup design, to fly the team to Russia. It includes pictures of The fact that only female crew members star players such as Mohamed Salah, the appear is no coincidence. Egyptian flag, and fan slogans. In a “making of” video released six months ago, the director says that the idea behind the ad was to show “the confidence of a woman”, where the different shots would have the look and feel of classic 1950s “pin up type of photos.” It’s an explanation and treatment that would not go down well in some markets, but clearly Ural Airlines believes that its Russian customer base will respond to it. WORLD CUP PLANES A number of airlines have aircraft in special football-themed livery, especially the ones flying the respective national teams to Russia. For example Iran’s ATA Airlines has painted an A320 in special “Team Melli” (the Iranian national team) design. On June 5th, it took the team from Istanbul to Russia.
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Finally, German flag carrier Lufthansa, has for a while been using “Fanhansa” aircraft in major tournaments, and this World Cup is no different.
KEY TAKE-AWAY In working with Panamanian artists in “the dream that came true” Copa Airlines was an enabler, without being seen to steal the limelight. The airline brought the different artists together and produced the video and song, but didn’t push for sales type lyrics to be included in the song. As a result, the number of shares and listens is respectable. Meanwhile, producing liveries around a major event is not a new idea but it works. You benefit from coverage when the design is unveiled, and you get thousands of social media fans worldwide taking pictures and sharing them on social media whenever the plane is spotted
ROYAL WEDDING STUNTS BY AIRLINES - VARIOUS
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TV viewers worldwide caught Royal Wedding fever on May 19th when the UK’s Prince Harry married actress Meghan Markle. In the USA for example, the networks sent 80 people to Windsor (UK) to cover the event, which was watched by c. 29 million US viewers. Not surprisingly, several airlines created marketing stunts around the wedding. Here’s a selection from British Airways, easyJet, Ryanair and WOW Air. BRITISH AIRWAYS - A FLIGHT CREWED BY HARRY AND MEGHAN
Harry or Meghan (or Megan). Why Toronto? It’s where Meghan Markle spent much of the past few years, living in the city while filming the TV series “Suits.” The 10-strong cabin crew, made up of two Harry’s, seven Megan’s and one Meghan left London’s Heathrow Airport at 1310, one hour after the wedding, on 19 May. Extra champagne and cake was loaded onto the flight and every passenger was given a personal bottle of Castelnau Blanc du Blanc.
The UK’s flag carrier, British Airways, In addition, anyone called Megan or Harry celebrated the event by crewing a flight was invited to use the British Airways to Toronto solely with employees called First Class lounge at Terminal 5.
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Finally, customers on long-haul flights will be able to watch episodes of the Toronto-shot TV series Suits, enjoy documentaries and podcasts about how Harry and Meghan met and the history of Windsor Castle.
WOW AIR - MEGHAN AND HARRY MASKS Icelandic LCC Wow Air also loaded cake and champagne onto one of its Londonbound flights on the wedding day.
These were served by cabin crew wearing British Airways came up with an idea cardboard “Harry” and “Meghan” masks, which resulted in getting worldwide after which a short Facebook video was media pick-up - for example by Stuff made and uploaded onto social media. (New Zealand), the Daily Mail, Reuters and America’s Fox News. For a piece of activity which must have cost the airline next to nothing, the Facebook video got 20k views, with another 20k watching the video on Instagram.
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RYANAIR - WEDDING THEMED CONTENT Ryanair has a good track record of mocking up quick, reactive content that ties into (non political) news events especially football and celebrity / film news. Recent examples include a post when Zinedine Zidane resigned from Real Madrid, a Darth Vader post coinciding with the new Han Solo Star Wars film, and a photoshopped image of two sacked English PremIer League (football) managers on the beach. In addition, Ryanair produces a regular video featuring two 1970s “Anchorman” style TV presenters - Dirk Fondly and Phil Gently. “Dirk” and “Phil” take a look at the week’s news with a suitably low budget backdrop, as well as using their show as a vehicle to promote whatever is going on at Ryanair at the time. The Harry and Meghan wedding got pretty much the same treatment. It was covered on Dirk and Phil’s show, and a number of posts went up around it.
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This included an infographic showing what a £100,000 spent on a Royal wedding dress would get you on Ryanair (e.g. 18,000 paninis and 4,000 pieces of checked in luggage), as well as posts featuring the back of Queen Elizabeth’s head while promoting advance seat reservations, as well as one about the drinks cart coming up the aisle on Ryanair flights in celebration. EASYJET - ROYAL LOOKALIKES Finally, easyJet went month search to find Meghan “Lookalikes.”
on a Harry
five and
The challenge was launched last November, when an actor who looks like Prince William unveiled the stunt. 3000 people from across Europe applied, claiming to look like one of Harry or Meghan with nine finalists being invited to come to London to audition in front of a judging panel, chaired by British ex-Royal correspondent and author of Prince Harry: Inside the Story, Duncan Larcombe.
Challenges that the finalists had to undergo included making a royal wave, throwing the bridal bouquet and making a romantic wedding proposal. The winners were Rhys Whittock from the UK as Harry, and Inmaculada Santisteban Serrano from Spain (“Meghan”), who received a year’s worth of free flights from the airline. They were then driven around central London in a horse drawn carriage, while easyJet’s PR and social media team captured footage of onlookers taking pictures of the fake Royals. Coverage appeared in The Sun (the UK’s largest tabloid), the Mail online (the largest English speaking newspaper online), and Metro among others.
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KEY TAKE-AWAY Both British Airways and easyJet’s stunts stand out for being light-hearted, easy to understand and creative. They were tailor made for media who at the time were actively looking for Royal wedding themed stories to fill their papers and websites. Meanwhile Ryanair and WOW Air took a different approach in being tactical, opportunistic and producing content (or in the case of WOW Air, in flight activity) that cost very little, especially given the number of people reached. Both approaches represent an effective way to leverage topical news events. See also SimpliFlying founder Shashank Nigam’s episode of the SimpliLive show on airlines the Royal Wedding.
BEAT THIS PRECISION - AIR BALTIC
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The soccer World Cup is not the only major sporting event going on, Professional Tennis has two major tournaments in the late Spring and Summer - RolandGarros (the French Open) in Paris and Wimbledon in London.
of which then pelted it back towards the tennis star, who had to hit it back.
The challenge was to do this 100x. However as the pilot of the aircraft was progressively increasing the thrust of the engines, at serve number 90, the ball The defending champion of Roland- actually made a hole in Ostapenko’s tennis Garros (the French Open) is actually racket. As a result, Air Baltic decided the Latvian - Alona Ostapenko. As a result, “match” was a draw. Riga-based Air Baltic created a video on which of them, the airline or the tennis Air Baltic has built a micro-site that champion, is the “most precise.” shows how the whole stunt worked, along with a video that includes tennis Air Baltic’s emphasis on precision comes match style commentary. Registering after the airline was ranked No 1 globally on the site also gave you the chance to in punctuality in 2017 by OAG analysts. win two free tickets to fly to Paris for the French Open. How did Air Baltic measure ‘precision?’ By pitting Ostapenko against one of Air This isn’t the first time that Alona Baltic’s Bombardier CS300 aircraft. Ostapenko has worked with Air Baltic. In December, the star visited the Air The airline built a temporary tennis court Baltic Training Center, where she flew in at Riga Airport, with Air Baltic cabin crew a flight simulator. Ostapenko had also acting as ball boys and girls. On one end been invited to sit in the cockpit on her of the court was Ostapenko, while several return flight from the 2017 Wimbledon hundred metres away from the other side tournament in London. of the court was the aircraft - with its engines running. On Facebook, the video of Alona Ostapenko playing the CS300 has so far A staff member threw the ball towards been watched 170k, while it has netted the back of the aircraft engine, the force 48k views on YouTube.
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KEY TAKE-AWAY In the article on Icelandair, we talked about the importance of any sports sponsorship leveraging the individual stories of the stars and bringing out their personalities. One way of doing that is through challenges - e,g, as we showed earlier, Manchester United players were put through a four minute cake decorating challenge by Aeroflot. When you are sponsoring an individual star, as is the case here, rather than a whole team, that is of course much more straightforward. Nevertheless, the challenge that Air Baltic came up with was really unique and creative. It was fun, watchable, and kudos to Air Baltic for the way they made their aircraft part and parcel of the stunt and at the same time managed to promote their recent award for punctuality.
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DELTA UNIFORM SAFETY VIDEO - DELTA
Delta recently launched a new uniform for its 60,000+ staff. The uniforms had been in development since late 2015, when acclaimed US fashion designer Zac Posen was chosen to drive the project forward.
women, including Uma Thurman, Michelle Obama and Gwyneth Paltrow among others.
Meanwhile fashion retailer Lands End was chosen to produce the uniforms. As a result, the uniforms immediately Zac Posen is a big name in the world had two big and very PR-able names, of fashion. His designs have been worn attached. by some of the world’s most influential
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When it came to the development, according to the Hollywood Reporter, Posen’s team “attended 80 employee focus groups and made more than 150 changes to the uniforms based on feedback. “The outfits include nods to travel—a collar on a women’s blouse collar was inspired by an airplane wing—while other pieces include such thoughtful details as passport and pen pockets.”
The official launch activity is noteworthy for two pieces of activity. A round the world tour of the uniforms. And a new safety video, showing them off. The uniform tour involved stops in Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney, Shanghai, Amsterdam and Paris - among others before finishing in Honolulu. With Zac Posen being a fashion designer to the stars, the tour itself included “an old Hollywood styled celebration” in LA.
One of the biggest changes however, In the safety video, cabin crew members was a move from traditional red to so- wear a series of Delta uniforms from called ‘passport plum.’ the 1940s, to the new “passport plum’ uniform of today designed by Zac The designs were unveiled in October Posen. 2016, after which they went into production, with employees receiving The crew members are from the US, but their new uniforms in late May 2018. also different countries such as Australia
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and Japan. Each then shows a different for its 2017 safety video celebrating safety video wearing a different uniform the history of the airline. In the video, from the past. cabin crew ran through the safety demonstration while wearing different For example, one crew member wearing uniforms from 1945 to the present day. a 1969-1970 uniform talks about smoking not being permitted, while the However, the treatment is different to instructions about life vests are given by Delta’s. The Delta safety has a modern another wearing a brown suit of 1979- feel (despite the historical uniforms), 1982 vintage. with the background soundtrack being the upbeat electronic track “Unbroken” Meanwhile both the introduction and by Roary. It also features an A350, thank you at the end are done by two which is of course a new addition to the crew members in the new 2018 uniform. Delta fleet. TAP PORTUGAL - THE JOURNEY SINCE The TAP Portugal video in contrast 1945 features the Austin Powers-esque “Chelsea Girl” , and wasn’t produced to TAP Portugal had a very similar idea show off new uniforms but instead was
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KEY TAKE-AWAY Lots of airlines have uniform redesigns, and we’ve covered them in the past. However, what is so impressive about Delta is how they told the story, and the depth which they went into to do so. On the Delta newsroom there is a whole list of stories, features and videos from 2015, when Zac Posen was appointed, right up to the recent uniform launch.
part of a wider campaign to highlight the airline’s history, which also includes a “retro-jet” - an A330-300 jet kitted out in 1970s retro livery. Everything on the flight has a 1970s theme from the type of food served to the in-flight entertainment. Coca Cola and Portuguese beer brand, Sagres, collaborated with the airline in having their drinks served with “retro branding.” The latest 2018 TAP Portugal safety video has moved away from the retro theme. Called “a country where the sun chose to live” it was produced with Visit Portugal. The video shows foreign tourists in Portugal, explaining the safety features in front of iconic Portuguese locations. However, the TAP retro-jet itself is still flying. You can see the videos on Facebook!
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This includes details of the global tour, a series of ‘50 days and 50 facts’ infographics, an article on colour pantones and Delta’s “passport plum” colour, and of course the new safety video. Delta really thought about how they could make this announcement as big as possible, and came up with a whole range of content ideas and marketing tactics to support it. Actually as an aside, Delta’s online newsroom (or News Hub) is one of the best we have seen. This is due to the sheer number of articles looking at different angles of each news story, and the variety of images and videos available. It is also very user-friendly in the way it is categorised. We look at a lot of online newsrooms, and Delta’s is very much best practice. Not only for an airline, but any brand.
THE EASYJET FLYING CAR- EASYJET
Airline and car rental partnerships are not intrinsically newsworthy or interesting. After all, a preferred car rental supplier is something that just about every airline has.
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easyJet however, turned the 15th anniversary of its partnership with Europcar into something noteworthy by coming up with a novel idea. The airline and car rental company pretended to offer the world’s first “flying cars.”
future involving flying cars.
For example, in one, “landing bay manager” Ian sits on top of a bell tower in Spain with his binoculars pointed at the sky. He then shoos tourists away from his hand painted parking spot in a town The mechanic of this was a series of short square, while another staff member called ‘mockumentary’ style films, uploaded Rashid shows off a so-called “Readiness onto easyJet’s social media channels. Scale” (a home-made piece of canvas with stickers on them). “Fly-Drive” is a collection of 1-2 minute clips where staff members are followed In another film, a customer services rep around in their imaginary jobs in a near called Rebecca gets a mechanic to explain
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how the Flying Car works (“it’s basically apply filters allowing them to select their perfect holiday. Lucky Trip was one of just magnets.”). two startups selected by the airline last Finally, a third clip sees pilot Sara train a year as part of its Travel Tech accelerator hapless member of the public in how to programme. The other was ‘FLIO”, which fly the flying car, during which he presses is an airport discovery and navigation random buttons and asks if he can do the app. ‘loop de loop.’ Meanwhile, last year easyJet launched a According to Kim McDonnell, head of ‘white noise’ video, for charity. Recorded at 39,000ft en-route from Gatwick to proposition at easyJet: Nice, the track features engine sounds “We are excited by future innovations and is designed to help children go to that will make travel easier for our sleep. passengers. We therefore wanted to offer our customers an entertaining insight With the soundtrack on sale on both Google Play and the iTunes store, into what the future could hold. proceeds are going to The Children’s “The mockumentaries allow us to create Sleep Charity, to help further support fun content for customers and highlight children and families with sleep issues. our long standing and successful partnership with Europcar, which millions In addition to the soundtrack, easyJet released a special ten hour video for of EasyJet customers use each year.” YouTube followers, which has just passed the 200,00 view mark (clearly, this WHITE NOISE doesn’t mean 200,000 people watched easyJet also deserves a mention for two it for ten hours). further marketing campaigns. “Lucky Trip” has been added to the easyJet mobile app, where customers
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KEY TAKE-AWAY Marketing magazine ‘The Drum’ calls the films about the Flying Car “laugh inducing” and we’d agree. You don’t often see a truly original idea (many marketing campaigns build on an idea that’s been done before), but this is one. Indeed, it is the kind of thing where you think “why didn’t I think of that myself?” Well done to easyJet for coming up with something creative and different and turning something that might otherwise have merited a ‘news in brief’ article in a trade magazine into something that has netted over a million views on Facebook alone.
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PAPER PLANE - JOON
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Joon, Air Frances’s youth inspired airline (or, if you share Gizmodo’s point of view - a “ridiculous airline for millenials”), has come up with what it calls a new way to offer “pooled gifts.”
Air France says by adding a personalised message onto the plane, “you don’t have to spend time chasing signatures all night long”, so in other words it saves you passing a card around.
Air France says that it is possible for a group of people to offer someone an “exceptional, surprising and personalized gift in just three clicks.”
That shows what Air France thought of when it came up with the paper plane idea. This is an alternative to things such as the office leaving present. When someone leaves a job, there is often a lot of head scratching about what to get them, as well as the last minute dash to hand around the card and write something funny inside.
Basically, you and a group of friends get together and share a link that serves as a kitty. Everyone adds money into the kitty, in which there is a deadline to contribute. Once the time is up, you give a Joon paper plane with the amount of money raised, to the lucky recipient, on which there’s also a personalised message. The person getting the paper plane then has a year to redeem it on Joon flights.
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Paper Plane takes away that headache, and just about everyone likes being given flights (or a flight voucher) as a present. Other occasions where Paper Plane could be used includes birthdays where different family members chip in, or indeed as wedding presents.
POOLED GIFT IDEAS FROM AIR CANADA the participant received as an Air Canada AND VIRGIN ATLANTIC e-gift card. It’s a good idea, but also similar to pooled Meanwhile at the end of last year, gift ideas from a number of airlines. Virgin Atlantic ran a “Where I want for Christmas” initiative, which encourages In 2016, Air Canada launched its ‘Embarq’ Brits to ask friends and family members programme, the aim of which was to for contributions towards flights and help “cash-strapped” millennials go on a holidays instead of unwanted Christmas honeymoon, business trip or adventure by presents. collecting small donations from friends, family, and even total strangers – which However in fairness, both these campaigns
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worked slightly differently to the Joon one, in that the eventual recipient decided where s/he wanted to go and asked friends and families for donations and present money. The Joon idea works the other way around, groups of friends or relatives initiate the group gift and the “paper plane” (or flight voucher to call it what it really is) can be used anywhere on the Joon network. SOCIAL AIRLINE NOT VERY SOCIAL? When looking at the Joon Paperplane campaign, we tried to find posts on Joon’s Facebook page to tell us more about it. To our surprise, it looks as if Joon has only posted twice on Facebook in 2018, which is strange for an airline that sold itself as being modern and youthful. Sure, Facebook is losing popularity among younger consumers, but it is still the world’s largest social network, and something no airline can afford to ignore. Joon’s Instagram and Twitter activity is somewhat more active, though there seem to be gaps, especially during the latter part of May.
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KEY TAKE-AWAY SimpliFlying CEO Shashank Nigam devoted his June 7th SimpliLive show to Joon. In it, he called Joon “as confused as an airline brand can get” in that it seems to be centred on tactical stunts and gimmicks and not strategy. Paperplane falls into that category, it’s a nice idea, but there’s little to underpin it. There is no support for the idea on Joon’s channels. As Shashank Nigam said in his video, “marketing is consistency”, and it’s lacking here.
UPGRADE FACE - VIRGIN ATLANTIC
In February we covered the “Upgrade your checking into Emirates economy and not Airline” campaign by Emirates. begging for an upgrade. The message was that he didn’t need to, as he had ‘upgraded’ The campaign featured a video showing his airline. passengers checking in for an unnamed airline and doing crazy things to try and The notion that people will try almost get an upgrade (e.g. attempting hypnosis). anything to get bumped up from economy was also the central feature of recent Virgin The video then finished with a man Atlantic marketing.
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Or more specifically, this was a promotion for their new credit card, where you earn Flying Club miles as you spend, and can also qualify for perks such as upgrades if you spend over a certain amount.
to bribe check-in attendants.”
Virgin Atlantic then brought in a camera crew into London’s Heathrow Airport to capture footage of what it called a “social experiment.” This involved the crew filming Virgin Atlantic promoted these credit card in slow-motion the surprise and joy on features in a two-pronged campaign. unsuspecting passengers’ faces as they received upgrades. The airline coined a First of all, the airline released a ‘survey name for this - “upgrade face.” said’ style story, which claimed that in order to try and get an upgrade, “one in five According to Oliver Byers, SVP of Sales people have pretended to have just got and Customer Loyalty at Virgin Atlantic, married, one in twenty have claimed to be “From the weird to the wonderful, our a journalist and some have even attempted check-in desk attendants have heard it all.
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Our loyal customers deserve rewards and BOSTON OR BREW what better way to do that than to kick start their journey with an upgrade. At the same time as it launched its ‘Upgrade Face” campaign, Virgin Atlantic launched a “Although we love to hear them, there is no promotion in Manchester to celebrate the need for extravagant excuses anymore; our return of direct flights to Boston. credit card holders are likely to experience that ‘Upgrade Face’ feeling sometime In particular, 50 people were given the soon.” chance to win a flight to Boston for the price of a cup of tea - or £3.95 ($5.32). The resulting video clips and story got extensive coverage in the UK media, However, there was a catch. People including the Evening Standard, Express, wanting one of these tickets had to turn Mirror and Daily Mail. up at the Richmond Tea Rooms in Manchester and if chosen (via a raffle), had to answer questions about Boston from airline quiz masters who were present.
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KEY TAKE-AWAY The ‘Boston or Brew’ stunt happened on June 1st, and as yet we can’t see any information on Virgin Atlantic’s social media channels about the response or any photos from the day. However, this was an idea that was both fun and easy for people to understand. With the UK being associated with tea, and Boston being known for the Boston Tea Party (even though it was something that kicked off the US War of Independence!), the link is obvious - and who doesn’t want a ticket to the US for $5? We also can’t imagine that it cost Virgin Atlantic much to run this tactic aside from the venue hire and 50 tickets that were basically free (as taxes were paid by the airline) “Upgrade Face” is a catchy name and Virgin Atlantic came up with a humorous and creative mechanic in capturing people’s facial expressions when receiving upgrades. The airline will almost certainly have been pleased with the press coverage that came out of this. At the same time, we can’t help feel that the Emirates ‘Upgrade Your Airline’ campaign was more effective as it had a better brand message. The simple reality is that premium class
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travel is out of reach of most people, and they will be choosing between different economy class products. If you are not an LCC, and you don’t compete primarily on price, then highlighting the overall passenger experience - in whichever cabin - is better for the brand. It also arguably helps promote an airline’s business and first class cabins along the lines of “if their economy is that good, just imagine how good first class must be” (and Emirates has plenty of videos made by A-lIsters such as Casey Neistat showing exactly that). After all, if people are coming up with outlandish ways to try and avoid flying in your economy cabin, what does it say about it?
THE SIMPLIFLYING AIRLINE MARKETING INNOVATION LAB HIGHLIGHTS FROM MIAMI
By Marco Serusi, SimpliFlying director of If you were there with us you know what we are talking about. If you missed it or would consulting like to refresh your memory, you are in the A plane crash, live music, acting, laughing, right place – this article is a recap. (For the sharing and some of the best airline pictures click here) marketers in the Americas, this was the recipe for one of the most successful Labs Of course, we started the day with a little surprise, making all of our attendees we have ever had. evacuate an imaginary plane that had just
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crashed – but soon we started getting down to business. Dave Carroll opened the day with the story of United breaks guitars and how it changed airline’s attitudes to social customer service.
The most common trouble areas were gaps between customer service and marketing or between agencies/call centres and the airline’s home team.
In both of these cases, the challenges After that, we followed with 3 sets of seemed to be both structural and roundtables and panels on command procedural. Structural because in most centres, integration of bots and humans, cases the airline’s internal organization and digital passenger experience. dates back to an age where customer service was very different and the speed of COMMAND CENTRES communication much slower. In the first roundtable of the day, we saw many airlines wishing they had a command centre or at least a system that would allow them to integrate the many different elements that make up their existing customer service and crisis management systems.
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Procedural because a lot of the processes were also designed for a different world and, despite the occasional update, have never been fully redesigned. At the same time, there was an interesting debate on what to do after customer
customer side. There were also many ethical considerations with discussions on whether the users should be informed that they are talking to a robot – even if they can’t tell the difference – and on how the new bots should be tested. Moreover, there were discussions on how handovers to human customer service agents could be managed and when/if the service problems are detected. Here some client should be informed. attendees defended that agents should be trained to escalate cases efficiently while On a more practical note, the testing of bots others thought that agents should be became an interesting discussion point trained to solve as many issues as possible with most attendees agreeing that smallwithout the need for escalation. scale tests were ideal but disagreeing on where the tests should be done. These discussions reflected a lot of what we have seen in our consulting work, One of the most controversial options especially during assessments. To find proved to be the testing on frequent flyers. out more about the topic we recommend reading our command centres article. Some airlines argued this would give them a better service and make them more loyal, INTEGRATING BOTS AND HUMANS others worried about the risk of upsetting such a valuable audience. Our second topic of the day was inspired by a question that – in different forms – has On the commercial front, an interesting been asked to us by many airlines over the point was raised around value, with past year and discussed by our consultants discussions taking place on whether a bot in a recent article. could really add value to the customer during the sales process. On one hand, bots bring great efficiencies and cost reductions – especially in digital DIGITAL PASSENGER EXPERIENCE customer service – but on the other, they are not yet very good at dealing with Our friends at Panasonic were the subject humans both on the airline side and on the matter experts for our digital passenger
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experience roundtables and helped us and frontline staff. bring out some interesting discussions It was often mentioned that crews and points. airport staff struggled during delays and cancellations because passengers had The phrase of the day was perhaps more updated and reliable information. “build something you can deliver” and encapsulated many of the attendees’ WHAT’S NEXT? concerns. It became clear that airlines often think too big or overpromise while failing In the breaks and after the lab the to deliver a consistent experience. conversations continued and many were happy to discover that they were not alone At the same time, it became clear that many and other people in other airlines shared airlines aren’t using what they already have the same problems. to the fullest – especially in terms of IFEs and connectivity. In this article we have only scratched the surface, but if you’d like to be part of these The conversations on the tables often conversations you can apply to participate veered towards practical concerns such as in our London lab. where to start. Here most airlines agreed that one of the biggest mistakes was not It will take place on the 4th of September giving enough information to the crews and as always will be attended by a selected group of the best airline marketers in the world.
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WHO IS BEHIND THIS MAGAZINE?
Many of you know us and have worked We’ve helped over 80 aviation brands with us before. worldwide become remarkable. We can do the same for you, adapting our fiveHowever, for those of you who don’t step consulting process to your needs. know us, SimpliFlying is the world’s leading aviation marketing consulting firm. We’ve recently celebrated ten years since Our team is 100% remote – based in Sin- Shashank Nigam our founder, started gapore, India, Spain, UK and Canada – SimpliFlying. meaning we can provide airlines with a global and a 24/7 presence. During that period, we have not only worked with an enviable list of aviation
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brands but also built a unique work cul- We also work extensively with Instagram ture that appeals to the disruptors in the and online video influencers and can industry. bring them to your brand. Take a look at our journey over the past Visible is headed by Shashank Nigam and ten years. Dirk Singer (the editor of this magazine), a PR and ad agency veteran with 20+ INTRODUCING VISIBLE years experience. Visible is the newest addition to the Sim- Take a look at the guide on visual pliFlying Group. storytelling we produced in May, and get in touch. We’ll gladly put some ‘starter It is a visual storytelling agency for avi- for ten’ ideas together for you on a no ation brands, where we develop online obligation basis. campaigns that are photo and video led.
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SOAR
SOAR is the first book to chart the journey of exceptional airline brands through eyes of the very people who made it happen – the employees. In writing this book, SimpliFlying CEO Shashank Nigam has drawn on his experience of helping 70+ brands in aviation to become remarkable. For more details on how to order copies for you, or your team, go to our website.
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THE SECRETS OF THE WORLD’S BEST AIRLINE BRANDS
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