Incredible Journeys Embraer

INCREDIBLE JOURNEYS EMBRAER

Over the past few months, aircraft manufacturer Embraer has been heavily promoting its “profit hunter” E190-E2 jet, with online video and visual storytelling taking centre stage in the campaign.

Over the Spring, Embraer launched a four part online video series called “Pioneer Flights”, this followed the development of the E190-E2, the creation of a phantom airline for test purposes called ‘Pioneer Airlines’, and the delivery of the aircraft to the launch customer, Wideroe of Norway.

This has now been followed up by “Incredible Journeys”, which is a web TV show, fronted by British TV presenter and former Royal Marine Arthur Williams, who uses a wheelchair following a car accident a number of years ago.

Williams first became a TV presenter during the 2012 Paralympic games, and has been used by Britain’s Channel 4 ever since.

In part one, Williams travels to Norway to be on the first E190-E2 flight from Bergen to Tromso. He interviews airline staff,

and does a flight report before landing in Tromso. The second episode features the Farnborough Air Show as well as London City Airport, where due to runway restrictions, most takeoffs are from Embraer aircraft (in particular via British Airways, Lufthansa, TAP Portugal, KLM and Alitalia). Overall both shows are engaging, and a great way to bring the aircraft to life. It also follows something we believe in, namely that ultimately everyone is a consumer. Even if you have a b2b brand / product, the people you are talking to still want to be enthused and inspired. And of course there is value in gaining wider acceptance, not to mention awareness, of the aircraft, among the travelling public. The only additional comment we would

make is that a few times, the dialogue in both the Pioneer Flights and Incredible Journeys videos seemed a bit forced as they veered into brand speak.

We also thought that the videos are weaker when Arthur Williams takes a look at the destinations, as well as the aircraft. In episode one, the scene at the end where he samples Norwegian cuisine in a restaurant in Tromso was almost an afterthought.

Contrast that with videos produced by the main AV bloggers. They don’t bother showing much of the destination because they know they can’t do it justice in the time available, and because their audience is first and foremost interested in the flight.

Both Pioneer flights and incredible journeys form part of a very impressive range of videos on the Embraer YouTube chan

nel. This included a daily web TV show from the Farnborough and Singapore airshows.

DELTA AND UNITED - TWO AIRLINES THAT INVEST HEAVILY IN ONLINE VIDEO

So long as the production values are high enough, and the narrative is compelling, it is worth looking at how you can produce so-called “webisodes.”

You keep the audience hooked, and coming back for more. And of course once they have watched it once, then the chances are that the YouTube algorithm will serve it up to them again.

As well as Embraer, in this edition, we’ve additionally profiled Singapore Changi Airport’s “Love at first flight” series, where the protagonists are a couple who met while interns at the airport.

Meanwhile two US airlines that invest heavily in online video include Delta and United. Last year Delta released a web series called “Earning our wings”, which follows a group of cabin crew trainees through their training programme. Meanwhile, United’s “Big Metal Bird” is an ongoing series of short videos that take a behind the scenes look at the airline. All the Big Metal Bird videos are hosted on a microsite and each episode is broken into individual segments, where you can learn more. For example, Episode 7 is about in-flight beverages. As part of that, you can find out more about the airline’s ‘master sommelier’ Doug Frost, as well as a look at Ily’s (United’s coffee partner) Colombian coffee farms. Earlier this year, trade title Digiday reported that United was ramping up its inhouse online video creation capabilities. This follows United hiring Megan Mitchell, previously head of social media and video for TravelZoo, as senior manager for integrated digital engagement. Mitchell told Digiday that bringing online video in-house meant that the airline could “move at the speed of social”, and not have to work with the kind of approval loops you get when using an external supplier. Over H2 2017, United more than doubled the number of videos shared to platforms with video views increasing by 245%.