Cairns Airport

Cairns Airport

Over in Northern Queensland Australia, Cairns Airport has launched a campaign aimed at persuading locals to fy direct to international destinations.

At the moment, over one million passengers a year fy to Brisbane and Sydney, with many then transferring internationally. Sydney in particular is an almost three hour fight in the “wrong” direction.

The creative hook is two kids local to the “far north” of Australia - Presley Raso, 6 and Layla Hennessy-Letinic, 7 - asking the question parents hear from kids all the time: “Are we there yet?”

In the ad, Presley and Layla ask the question because they can’t get their heads around the fact that you have to travel South to then go North again. Or as Layla asks her Dad - “We have to go two hours this way, to go eight hours that way?”

Cairns Airport Chief Commercial Officer – Aviation Paul McLean said Presley and Layla perfectly captured the essence of a conversation that has likely been played out in the domestic departure terminal many times:

“Kids are invariably known for saying exactly what we’re all thinking and often they get right to the heart of the obvious with their straight-forward logic.”

In fact, Cairns Airport is directly connected with Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Japan, Indonesia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, something Paul McLean says many passengers don’t even realise.

It’s a nice campaign, with an easy to understand message and conveying it through the mouths of young kids really works. It’s also a problem many secondary and regional airports worldwide face, a lot of travellers are simply on auto-pilot to fy to an airline’s hub.

We could also see several ways in which the idea ofhaving to fy two hours South to go eight hours North, could be extended and amplifed even further.