Finnair - Now / Here

An increasing number of airlines now promote their home country / city as a place to take a short break, rather than just somewhere to change fights.

Examples include Icelandair, which has been promoting Iceland stopovers for years (see our June 2018 issue for the airline’s World Cup / Iceland football team themed stopovers), Qatar Airways, Etihad (see our coverage of the airline’s 48 hour stopover challenge), TAP Portugal, and of course Finnair.

Finnair has been particularly active in targeting Chinese travellers who use HEL as a bridge between the Far East and Europe / North America.

This has involved Chinese celebrity chef Steven Liu taking part in a number of stunts and marketing promotions, for example this one where he teamed up with a Finnish Chef to prepare a dinner in the Forests outside Helsinki in between fights.

Now Finnair has broadened out its Finland-destination marketing efforts through the launch of a new online travel platform, called Now/here.

The Now/here (or ‘Nowhere’) website opens up with a video telling people that if you want to fnd ‘busy and bustling megacities’ (cue a picture of Dubai) or ‘monumental wonders’ (image of the Sphinx and the Pyramids) you’ve come to the wrong place.

The video then moves onto what you will fnd (silence, nature, wildlife etc) with the call to action being that Nowhere is a place for you to fnd custom, tailor made experiences in the Nordics.

Those experiences include a night in the wild going bear watching, an immersion into Finnish Sauna culture as well as a Midnight Sun photography tour.

The site itself is backed up by a number of social media properties independent of the main Finnair ones. In paticular Facebook and Instagram.

The fact that Finnair has essentially decided to create a completely separate sub-brand for its destination content and experiences is interesting.

Finnair told us that there’s a separate core team working on the project, consisting of a team lead, a project manager, a product manager, a content creator and a consultant.

Also, professionals from the matrix organization provide their expertise to Now/here for example with fnancials, IT and marketing.

Experiences are sourced from the suppliers (activity providers) and are curated by the Now/here team. So far, Finnair says there are 1500 partners involved who have signed up and beneft from Finnair's marketing experience and international reach.

Finnair content creator Katri Pehkonen further told us that concept was first tested in Singapore, Hong Kong, UK, US and Australia, prior to the Global roll-out in February.

We tested the concept idea and look & feel as well as some of the example experiences with a clickable mobile site. The responses among the target group across the countries were positive and rather similar. The concept was perceived as inspiring, fresh and as something new. The way Now/here presents the destinations and products increased an interest to travel to the destination which naturally is one of the main goals.