How airlines can make celebrity fashion & food partnerships work

Premium class passengers flying with Taiwan’s EVA Air, will now benefit from new amenities, special menus and sleep wear created by a series of big names in design, fashion and food.

The airline brought on Jason Wu, who designed Michelle Obama’s inauguration dresses in 2008 and 2012, to create new sleepwear for passengers flying long-haul in Royal Laurel and Premium Laurel Classes.

Meanwhile, Tan-style cuisine Master Chef Huang Ching-biao has created a special menu for selected EVA routes.

The airline says that it uses “ancient recipes...made popular in royal courts and enjoyed over the centuries by prime ministers and world leaders.”

Finally, EVA Air worked with Rimowa and Ferragamo to create new 2019 overnight kits. Those departing from Taiwan receive overnight kits in RIMOWA’s popular new “Carmona Red.”

Contents include a color-coordinated eye mask, socks, a hairbrush, a microfiber cloth for cleaning glasses and screens on personal devices, earplugs, a toothbrush and toothpaste and skincare essentials from CLARINS.

It is premium, but is it unexpected?

Sure, we could see passengers wanting to take home PJs designed by the same person who created Michelle Obama’s Inauguration dress. Especially given the thriving market in airline collectables on eBay.

However, big name partnerships are now almost something of a hygiene factor. You just expect it from a reputable carrier, when paying c. $5,000 for your ticket.

So how can you make a partnership work?

Finnair and Delta are two examples of airlines that have done that, mainly by creating stories and content around the association.

In the past, we’ve covered Finnair for its association with Chinese celebrity chef

Steven Liu, who has developed menus in Finnair premium cabins on flights from China.

However, not only is Liu creating menus for the airline, he has fronted a number of campaigns aimed at appealing at Chinese travellers.

For example, in 2016, Finnair produced a piece of video content showing Steven Liu arriving in Helsinki (from Shanghai) where he had five hours to spare before his next flight.

These five hours formed the basis of a stopover challenge, where his Finnish colleague Sasu Laukkonen took him on a trip to the countryside, with the two of them preparing a meal from the ingredients they found, before Liu caught his next flight.

Hear the taste

Meanwhile in 2018, Steven Liu worked with Finnair in a creative tactic looking at how sound affects taste.

As part of the “Hear the Taste” campaign, Steven Liu went on a trip around the Nordic countries to record northern sounds that enhance his culinary vision.

This then resulted in a so-called “scientific soundscape” for each of Steven Liu’s dishes - essentially listening to an audio track was meant to enhance the flavours.

In a nod to the Chinese audiences Finnair was trying to reach, the sounds could be played via a mini-programme on Wechat.

Delta and LSTN

In June 2017, we featured Delta for working with socially responsible headphone company LSTN, as opposed to the usual suspects such as Bose or Marshall.

The headphones themselves are given out in bags containing the LSTN motto “We believe that what is good for business should be good for the world.”

This was part of a wider CSR initiative where the airline committed to taking part in ‘hearing missions’ in the developing world, in cooperation with the Starkey Hearing Foundation.

The distinctive wood design means the headphones themselves are eye-catching, they make you want to look twice. And many people won’t have heard of

The link with Delta’s wider CSR programme, in turn allows the airline to tell stories and create content around the partnership. For example, take a look at this video.

As tech and media website Engadget wrote at the time, with the LSTN partnership, Delta removed “the guilt from keeping in-flight headphones.”