Airline Marketing Benchmark Report August 2014

benchmark report

airline marketing

AUGUST 2014 ISSUE

A monthly selection of the most innovative marketing campaigns launched by airlines around the world SimpliFlying | airlinetrends.com August 2OI4

Issue

benchmark report

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welcome.

Published by market research agency airlinetrends.com and aviation marketing strategy consulting firm SimpliFlying, the Airline Marketing Benchmark Repor t contains a wide range of airline marketing case studies each month, providing you with the latest and most innovative social, digital, experiential and traditional airline marketing campaigns recently launched by airlines around the world.

Whether you’re looking for inspiration or are eager to help your airline move into the nex t stage of engagement, while also understanding how your airline marketing initiatives compare to campaigns from competitors in general, these repor ts are indispensable for airline professionals working in the f ield of marketing and corporate communications. The monthly repor ts also help agencies that work with airlines stay on top of the latest innovative airline marketing initiatives.

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experiential

For any questions about the repor t, please contact Shubhodeep Pal at shubhodeep@simplif lying.com.

As innovative campaigns come in all shapes and sizes, the Airline Marketing Benchmark Repor t is categorized into the following four themes:

Faced with ever more experienced consumers, who routinely ignore the commercials and ads thrown at them, airline brands are finding new ways to break through the adver tising clutter to connect with consumers.

social

Besides engaging their online audience via Facebook and Twitter-based campaigns, the airline industry is also busy experimenting with new social media platforms.

digital

With the huge popularity of smar tphones and tablets, airlines are tapping into these digital platforms to engage consumers, as well as releasing videos online which they hope will go viral.

traditional

Despite the current focus on social, digital and experiential campaigns, airlines continue to serve up creative, traditional media-based, initiatives in order to reach a mass audience.

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cross-media

experience tour

experiential #lanlevaalpibeabrasil LAN COLOMBIA

CHINA AIRLINES

As Colombia-based Avianca was named the Official Airline of the Colombian national soccer team who for first time in sixteen years qualified for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, the country’s other major carrier – LAN subsidiary LAN Colombia – was faced with the challenge to come up with alternative ways to benefit from Colombia’s World Cup participation.

from Bogota to Sao Paulo were surprised to see Valderrama donning an apron and join the crew to provide service to passengers on board.

During the flight, passengers took photographs with Valderrama and celebrated the upcoming World Cup at 30,000 feet with tricolor wigs, Colombian soccers shirts and other gifts from the airline.

LAN Colombia came up with a creative way to reconnect Colombians with memories of their last success in a World Cup by appealing to the most popular soccer player in the national football history, Carlos Valderrama.

Also known as ‘El Pibe’ (The Kid), Valderrama played 111 caps for the Colombian national team and is known for his iconic afro hairstyle.

Broadening the ‘micro event’ to its social media channels, LAN also shared images of the inflight event with its Facebook fans and Twitter followers .

The same day Avianca was set to take the national soccer team to Brazil in a private charter, passengers onboard LAN flight 3505

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A video of the event by LAN on YouTube took only took 48 hours to reach over 190,000 views, 3,500+ likes, 1,500+ shares and 1,000+ comments, and reached more than 2.350.000 people in total.

Inviting people on the streets to experience an airline’s new products and service themselves has been an experiential marketing tactic deployed by an increasing number of airlines.

Earlier examples include Delta’s ’Flight Therapy’ pop-up space in downtown Tokyo, and JAL installing its new seats in various cafes around the city.

In California, Air New Zealand recently toured the state with its ‘London Ready’ truck, while JetBlue created ‘The Mint Room’ in LA (both featured in the July 2014 edition of this report).

Now China Airlines has put its new seats – to be featured on its upcoming Boeing 777300ER – on a truck that is currently driving around Taiwan. Inside the truck are China Airlines’ new Business Class suite, Premium Economy seat and its Economy ‘Family Couch’, and China Airlines flight attendants

are alongside to showcase and introduce the various seat features to those trying out the seats.

Other elements of the new cabin are also mimicked on the truck, such as mood-lighting and the persimmon grain texture of the cabin walls. Because of the high temperatures in Taiwan, fans are placed next to each seat and ice cream is given out to the public.

Visitors have the chance to win prizes such as free tickets and B777-300ER models by playing a slot machine installed on the truck.

By checking-in and posting pictures of the event on Facebook, they can also earn gifts.

The China Airlines brand truck is touring major districts in Taipei, Hsinchu, Tainan, and Kaohsiung from July 31 to August 24.

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benchmark report

airline marketing

happiness blanket

sky wheel

BRITISH AIRWAYS

In an effor t to gain more insights into – as well as promote – its onboard products and services, British Airways has conducted an experiment at 30,000ft by asking passengers located in different cabins to cover themselves under a socalled ‘Happiness Blanket’ .

Passengers had to wear a special headband – the MyndPlay BrainBand , which uses neuro-sensors to measure a person’s brainwaves and ‘meditative state’ on a scale of one to 100. This information is then relayed via Bluetooth to LED lights woven into the ‘happiness blanket’, which changes colour to show when they are at their most relaxed. When the number is low it turns red (stressed) or when it is near the 100 mark it turns blue (relaxed).

BA said it will analyze the data from the blankets to make the in-f light experience

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FINNAIR

better and the color patterns also gave an idea to the crew on the behavioral response of the passengers to in-f light services such as the timing of meals, the menu and the movie options.

The airline released a video (over 400,000 views so far) about the experiment that shows how initially there are f luctuations as passengers settle in, while there is a noticeable change in passengers’ mood as they enjoy food and drink. The blankets also show the reactions to different types of f ilms and enter tainment.

While initially focusing on the technology and the passenger experience using it, the video closes with a clear marketing hook, stating “Never underestimate the power of a good f light’s sleep.”

Ferris wheels have been chosen by several airlines as a f itting venue for marketing initiatives. For example, Brussels Airlines in the summer of 2012 gave visitors of the annual Tomorrowland festival in Belgium a free ride in the Tomorrowland ferris wheel, while Air France did the same at Montreal’s ‘En Lummiere’ festival. On a related note, Emirates has its name linked to the high-prof ile ‘Emirates Air Line’ cable car that crosses the Thames in London.

In Helsinki, Finnair this summer has par tnered with the new Skywheel Helsinki to rename the ferris wheel to Finnair Skywheel . The 40-meter high ferris wheel opened in early June in Katajanokka harbour in central Helsinki, not far from where Finnair f irst based its f light operations in the 1920s.

The observation wheel is equipped with

30 climate-controlled blue-and-white gondolas for year-round operation, including a four-person VIP cabin featuring a glass f loor, leather seats and Veuve Clicquot champagne service (fare: €195). One trip on the Finnair SkyWheel lasts 15 minutes, while a ride in the VIP cabin takes 25 minutes.

Says Finnair’s marketing director Jarkko Konttinen, “We are proud to be associated with Helsinki’s newest landmark, which also has a special connection to our own history. The ferris wheel is a prominent and internationally notable Helsinki landmark that includes an aviation element. This is why we as an airline wish to be seen with it.”

Finnair Plus members receive a 25 percent discount on the €12 fare and on 8 June the airline organised an event where all Finnair Plus members could ride the ferris wheel for free.

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social

social

affamily

a380 challenge

AIR FRANCE X BOEING

EMIRATES X AIRBUS

To celebrate the delivery of its 50th Airbus A380 aircraft this July, Emirates and Airbus have created a Facebook-based app called the Emirates A380 Challenge . The game invites users to answer questions and upload content to move an A380 along its flight path.

Those who manage to reach hidden hotspots along the way will win prizes that include Economy return tickets between Dubai and an Emirates A380 destination or a stay at the Jumeirah Zabeel Saray hotel in Dubai.

In order to move the A380 along its path, participants could carry out various actions.

Loving the Emirates A380 on Facebook would move the aircraft 10 kilometres, answering questions (15 km), uploading a picture (50 km), while uploading a video would move the aircraft 100 km. When a flight is complete, a new flight begins from one of Emirates’ A380 destinations.

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Participants can invite friends to improve their chances of winning and the Facebook app also featured information about Emirates offers, the airline’s A380 destinations and notifications of recent winners.

A similar campaign was created by British Airways in September 2013, when the airline invited Twitter users to #RaceThePlane in a digital competition to mark the arrival of its Dreamliner fleet. The aim of the campaign was to pit a virtual ‘Tweetliner’ plane (‘powered’ by tweets) against a real Dreamliner flight from London to Toronto.

Participants in the campaign had to tweet or retweet a message with #RaceThePlane in a 7.5 hour window (the actual flying time of the flight) in order to win one of five ticket pairs to Toronto. The more tweets mentioning the hashtag, the faster the virtual plane flew.

To celebrate the 80th anniversary of Air France, the airline together with Boeing organized a global photo competition dubbed ‘Air France Family’ which is based on the idea that “We all have a story.”

Says Air France, “Families living in different countries, reunions with friends and loved ones, business trips. You have all been a par t of the Air France history through a common passion for travel. Air France has been a par t of all these highly emotional moments, whose heritage is made up of individual stories.”

Throughout the summer (8 July to 31 August) anyone can upload photo souvenirs of their travel experiences – such as encounters with friends and loved ones, reunions, trips to discover new countries – to the AF Family microsite and each photo had to be accompanied by a shor t

description. More on the campaign in this video Submissions so far include many images of first trips, selfies, and vintage images and the photos will progressively make up a visual collage of individual stories, which will subsequently be used to create a video intended for online publication on the company’s website, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube sites and onboard Air France’s long-haul fleet.

The winners will be selected by a jury made up media personalities Claire Chazal (French TV journalist), Pedro Winter (French DJ) and Jonone (US graffiti ar tist) along with two Air France and Boeing representatives. Besides the public prize of four long-haul tickets for the photo that has generated the most ‘likes’, par ticipants can win three pairs of two long-haul tickets and a VIP tour of the Boeing factory in Seattle.

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h8te thousand miles

digital

eye of the fan TURKISH ARLINES

Much like the Champions League in football, the Final Four will crown the best basketball team in Europe. As official title sponsor of the Euroleague Final Four, Turkish Airlines in the past three years has launched an innovative digital campaign, called Eye of the Fan .

The centerpiece of the campaign is one man with a camera strap ped to his head (‘The Eye of the Fan’) who offers fans a view of the action through the eyes of a basketball follower and who has unparalleled access to behind the scenes and moments that previously were out of reach for the fans.

Turkish Airlines followers can dictate the actions of Eye of the Fan through social media channels.

At this year’s final in Milan, the Eye of the Fan also got company from four Fan Masters – chosen out of thousands of applicants – who

AUGUST 2014 ISSUE

SPIRIT

represented each team participating in 2014 Final Four (video here ).

The entire Final Four ‘adventure’ of Eye of the Fan was broadcasted on the Eye of the Fan microsite and the Turkish Airlines Facebook fan page.

Adding an experiential element to the campaign, Turkish Airlines also sent a tram filled entirely with basketballs around the busy city center of Milan, asking passersby to guess how many basketballs were inside the tram, to have a chance to win a trip to Istanbul.

Almost 5,000 people submitted their guess online .

On the last day of the campaign, the tram stopped at Milan’s popular Cathedral Square and gave away all basketballs to passers-by (video here ).

Ultra low-cost carrier Spirit Airlines, routinely referred to as the Most Hated Airline in the U.S, is trying to harness that hate (and generate publicity) with a campaign inviting travelers to vent about any airline, including Spirit.

Each “venter” who par ticipates in Spirit’s Hate Thousand Miles Giveaway will receive 8,000 of the airline’s frequent-f lier miles, which is about 2,000 miles shor t of a free f light. They must have or sign up for a Spirit Airlines mileage account.

Under a tagline saying “UNLEASH THAT HATE,” Spirit gives visitors a dropdown list of airlines to “hate on.” Visitors just have to keep complaints to a Twitterfriendly 140 characters or less. “Or maybe you’re one of our fans -- feel free to share some love, too,” Spirit adds.

For those who submit a gripe, Spirit gives this conf irmation: “We’re glad you got

that out. From now on, we’ll be better about spreading the word on how we f ly - because we want everyone to know about our Bare Fares, how you only pay for what you use, and how Spirit saves you money.”

“We want to change the way people think about air travel and educate them about the Spirit way of traveling,” said Ben Baldanza, Spirit’s CEO. “We’re going to Hug The Haters.”

The promotion will end once the airline gives away one billion miles. “So far, there’s been a lot of venting about delays, weather and all the problems you’d have on almost any airline,” said a Spirit spokesman.

The campaign is accompanied by a somewhat off beat video featuring a guitar player and a singer who sings angry tweets.

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one million points

igital

fly my meal

QANTAS FREQUENT FLYER

The concept of generosity has been an increasingly popular marketing concept in recent years. As WPP agency Fitch puts it: “We have identif ied a loose family of brands we call Generous Brands. By ‘generous’ we mean that these brands are prepared to make gestures that are not just commercially motivated but empathise with consumers: these brands show their hear tbeat.”

To celebrate the milestone of 10 million members, the Qantas Frequent Flyer program launched an initiative that showed how air travel can really make a difference in people’s lives. Qantas par tnered with News Corp Australia and The New Zealand Herald to give away one million Qantas Frequent Flyer Points to readers who submitted an inspirational story how one million Qantas Points would change their life.

About 200,000 people around Australia

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MONARCH

entered the competition and the winning stories were picked by a Qantas’ Frequent Flyer member judging panel.

The campaign generated many moving stories , including the following one from Dan from NSW, who was among the winning entries.

“My 24 year old daughter Victoria is disabled. She suffers from Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia. Vikki is likely to be in a wheelchair by the age of 30. But this isn’t a sob story. Vikki is passionate about travelling and working with disadvantaged kids. She has visited many places in the past 3 years as a suppor t worker for special needs children in Queenstown and worked in an orphanage in Chang Mai. Vikki’s travel and helping all these wonderful children will inevitably stop if/when she is conf ined to a wheelchair. A million Qantas Frequent Flyer points means she can travel ex tensively before this happens.”

Many airlines have been experimenting with co-creation campaigns in which the general public creates, or has a say, in the development of new products and services. For example, in the f ield of inf light catering, Cathay Pacif ic a few years ago held a ‘The Ar t of the Deser t’ contest in the USA in which it asked its Facebook fans to come up with an Asian-inspired desser t, snap a photo of their creation, and submit it online for voting. The winner then had her desser t served on the airline’s f lights out of Nor th America.

Meanwhile, ANA currently lets its social media fans on Facebook, Twitter and Weibo vote on which meal they would like to see added to the Economy Class menu, with the most recent voting round receiving over 6,000 votes in total.

In the UK, leisure carrier Monarch and its

onboard par tner Alpha LSG this summer are calling on children to enter their Fly My Meal competition, the winners of which will have their say on Monarch’s new kids’ inf light menu.

The competition asked kids local to each of Monarch’s six UK bases to submit a photo of themselves holding a handwritten description or drawing of their favourite meal. Closing date for entries was on 3rd August 2014.

Two children from each region have been chosen to attend an off icial tasting session in London on 13th August. There, they will taste-test a shor tlist of dishes created by Alpha LSG’s head chef from competition entries nationwide, before deciding the f inal menus for Monarch’s onboard meals served to over 19,000 children every year.

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fifa worldcup 2014

blocked content banners BRUSSELS AIRLINES

In an effor t to promote its low-priced flights from Belgium to France to the audience of French speaking Belgians, Brussels Airlines used blocked content videos to achieve the goal.

Approximately 58 percent of the Belgian population speaks Flemish as their native language, while almost 40 percent speaks French. Fur thermore, 40 percent of these French speaking Belgians watch TV programmes broadcast on French television rather than those broadcast in Belgium.

When a viewer misses an episode of his/ her favourite TV programme, he/she usually can watch it online in a later stage.

However to be able to do so, one has to live in France and those viewers in Belgium are shown the following message instead: “This content is not available in your country.”

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EMIRATES

Spotting an oppor tunity, Brussels Airlines used these so-called ‘blocked content’ messages as an adver tising medium, and placed banners within the video screens on websites such as The Voice France that told viewers from Belgium to “Go where the content is available. Fly to France.” This video explains the concept in more detail.

When viewers clicked on the banners they could directly book their flight. According to Brussels Airlines’ ad agency BBDO, the ‘blocked content banners’ reached a click through rate of 14,58 percent, a level which hasn’t been the norm since 1994, and which is almost a 100 times more than a traditional banner campaign.

Soccer’s huge popularity around the world has made it a magnet for carriers looking to raise their profile. Over the last few years, fast-growing airlines such as Emirates, Etihad, Qatar Airways and Turkish Airlines have been using using soccer to build their brand names and reach a broad audience.

Emirates in particular has spent lavishly to become one of the world’s biggest sponsors of sports, including half a dozen European soccer teams such as Real Madrid, Paris Saint Germain, Arsenal and AC Milan – four of Europe’s top 10 clubs by revenue. According to BusinessWeek, the GBP150 million Emirates is paying Arsenal for five years is more than five times the entire sponsorship budget of Lufthansa.

According to an estimate from London-based Brand Finance, Emirates also spent about

USD100 million over the past four years to be one of FIFA’s six top “partners,” a group that includes Adidas, Coca-Cola, Hyundai/Kia, Sony and Visa.

Being an official FIFA partner also gave Emirates the opportunity to take central stage at the World Cup final.

Or as BusinessWeek nicely put it: “As the jubilant German soccer team hoisted its World Cup trophy and FIFA President Sepp Blatter preened, a phalanx of Emirates flight attendants flanked the scene in frozen smiles.

The women, dressed in their beige Emirates uniforms topped off with red pillbox caps, presented the German athletes with gold medals on silver trays. That gave it the chance to place its flight attendants in countless images of the winning team.”

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more indian than you think

why did we invite your bother?

LUFTHANSA INDIA

Following earlier initiatives by BA – such as its Visit Mom and Go Further To Get Closer commercials – Lufthansa has debuted its first TV commercial specifically made for the Indian market.

An extension of Lufthansa’s ‘Nonstop You’ campaign, the new spot aims to reflect the ‘Soul of Germany, with a heart of India’, as Lufthansa puts it. The film was released in cinemas over the weekend of 18 July and went on air on 21 July.

The More Indian Than You Think commercial (150,000 views on YouTube so far) opens with an old man informing his grandson that they’re visiting his father in New York, on a German airline. He goes on to tell the young boy about some German qualities, labeling them as a ‘bit different’, ‘always serious’ and calls their movies ‘grey’. He also casts aspersions about their food and wonders whether they would have heard of Bollywood.

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KLM UK

These perceptions change as they board their flight. The duo are greeted a with a Namaste by the crew, the IFE features Bollywood content, and the surprised guests are served Indian food. Noticing that all of this is in contrast to what he had been told, the boy tells his grandfather that they’ve boarded an incorrect flight. The old man realises that things have changed and calms the boy down, followed by a voiceover that says, ‘More Indian than you think’.

Sangeeta Sharma, marketing and communications manager at Lufthansa India, said, “Our research has shown that our brand is extremely strong in India, but we needed to show that we understand customers and their Indian sensibilities.”

Made to raise awareness of the fact that it flies from more UK destinations than any other carrier (KLM flies from 15 regional airports in the UK to its Amsterdam hub), the airline launched a local ad campaign that humorously highlights the perils of driving long distances to catch a flight.

‘Why did we ask your brother?’ sees a family of holidaymakers driven to the brink – quite literally – by their hapless relative who struggles to get them to the airport on time.

As James Rawlings, creative director of production company Hoot Comedy Hoot Comedy, commented on the campaign: “The fact that KLM offer services from 15 cities in the UK, forced us to look at the part of the journey that’s now no longer relevant: that long, unpredictable and often stressful journey to the airport. And what if you throw

in an unreliable relation to help get you there?

This was an exercise in bringing to the screen all those little peculiarly irritating moments we’ve all experienced when embarking on an international journey.”

Besides the online version (which only has generated 1,500 views so far), the commercial is also shown on regional television in areas with local airports that KLM flies from. “The objective of this campaign is to support our commercial strategy of promoting regional airports to fly the world. This advert is very specific to our UK audience,” said Djamila Pethen, marketing manager UK for KLM.

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crop circle SPIRIT

As part of its Bare Fares campaign (discussed in the May 2014 edition of this report), Spirit Airlines has launched what can be describes as a ‘guerilla marketing campaign on steroids’. In mid-July, a mysterious crop circle in the shape of a man covering his privates appeared in a farm field north of Kansas City International Airport (KCI), causing a stir in social media .

Many flying out of KCI took notice of it and shared the image of a figure covering himself with baggage parked next to them. On example of one of the tweets: “Anyone know what this crop circle means? Located as we took off from @KCIAirport on @SouthwestAir.” - @therookiedad. The initiative also earned exposure at local TV and other media.

in May. No Spirit Airlines logo is present in the crop circle, but there are “Bare Fare” billboards up around the airport. “We have to think of ways to get people to know who we are without spending millions of dollars on advertising campaigns. The crop circle was created to promote our totally stripped down Bare Fares and the fact that we’ll be starting service to and from Kansas City in August,” said a Spirit spokesman.

The giant logo covers some 20 acres in a soybean field and was created by a company called Precision Mazes, which says it used GPS to make precise measurements and cuts. The farmer who’s land the crop circle is on was also compensated for his destroyed crops.

It turned out the crop circle was showing Spirit’s ‘bare fare’ logo which the airline introduced

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about us.

Pricing SimpliFlying is a global consultancy that believes in thinking differently about aviation marketing. Having worked with over 50 airlines and airports around the world, it has presences in Singapore, UK, Spain, Canada and India.

Today, SimpliFlying advises airlines and airports on customer engagement strategy, achieving aviation business goals by harnessing the latest innovations in the social media space.

The firm also conducts MasterClasses to train and develop airline and airport teams to become self-sufficient in executing measurable and rewarding social campaigns.

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SimpliFlying’s growing list of clients includes Lufthansa, Emirates, Toronto Pearson Airpor t, Halifax International, KLIA, Jet Airways, LAN Airlines, airBaltic, Airbus and Bombardier.

Get in touch at engage@simpliflying. com or visit www.simpliflying.com.

Airlinetrends.com is an independent industry and consumer trends research agency that monitors the global aviation industry for commercial innovations in response to changing consumer behavior.

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