Airline Marketing Benchmark Report May 2016

benchmark report

airline marketing

MAY 2016 ISSUE

A monthly selection of the most innovative marketing campaigns launched by airlines around the world SimpliFlying May 2OI6

Issue 44

benchmark report

airline marketing

welcome.

Published by 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.

MAY 2016 ISSUE

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.

TV, PRINT, OOH

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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benchmark report

airline marketing

experiential

euro 2016 plane

hidden picnics

TURKISH AIRLINES As the official Airline Par tner of EURO 2016, one of Europe’s most prestigious football (soccer) tournaments, Turkish Airlines is getting wrapped up in the excitement by literally wrapping one of its newest aircraft in a special livery celebrating the championship tournament, the spirit of friendly competition and the adventure of travel.

In mid-April, Turkish Airlines unveiled a gleaming A330-300 wide body aircraft painted in the EURO 2016 (UEFA European Championship) livery. While the plane retains the signature Turkish Airlines red and white airline logo on the tail, the back end of the fuselage is now a brilliant blue with images of a football pitch and the EURO 2016 logo.

The maiden flight for the newly-decorated aircraft took off recently and saw the plane

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QATAR AIRWAYS headed for Paris, which will be the location of the tournament’s final match on July 10.

Several major news titles repor ted on the unveiling of the A330 and its first flight – including The Sun and the Financial Express . UEFA itself posted an ar ticle about the plane on its own blog , and a YouTube video created by Turkish Airlines (viewed about 5000 times in two weeks) shows the new livery being painted.

Turkish Airlines is the first-ever official airline par tner of the UEFA and will also sponsor a number of Fan Zones throughout host cities in France when matches begin in June. The airline also promises that more giveaway competitions and a host of cool fan experiences will be coming down the pipeline as EURO 2016 draws closer.

In March, Qatar Airways launched a new daily direct route from Doha to Sydney using the massive star-appeal of Aussie popstar Kylie Minogue to help spread awareness and celebrate the occasion at a gala dinner.

color (Pantone 222C), which is borrowed from the nation’s flag. The bikes were equipped with a woven basket filled with roses and navigational assistance, which guided the riders to secret locations all around Sydney.

In “tandem” with that effor t, Qatar Airways’ marketing gurus hatched a simple and sweet experiential campaign idea to keep the new route buzz alive and give Sydney residents the chance to ride tandem bikes to secret locations where they were treated to many of the delights they’d experience flying on Qatar Airways’ Boeing 777-300 aircraft to Doha.

Once they arrived at their “destination” the Sydney natives were again welcomed

by Qatar Airways flight crew. They were then made comfor table and treated to a private picnic where they could taste and array of culinary treats from Qatar Airways’ onboard menus, while enjoying the attentive hospitality of the airline’s flight attendants.

The airline set up a pop-up shop location in Sydney and people who visited were met

by Qatar Airways flight crew, then offered a tandem bicycle painted in Qatar Airway’s striking and iconic plum/maroon brand

Qatar Airways made a short video to show off this effor t, which was viewed about 3,500 times on YouTube between April 18 th and March 2nd.

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social

KLM and facebook messenger

PowerTrip JET BLUE In time for Women’s History Month this March, JetBlue played host to a very special networking event at 30,000 feet, coordinated by women’s magazine Marie Claire.

The unique “PowerTrip,” brought together leading women in an inspiring environment where they were free to get to know each other better, share professional exper tise, and make impor tant new connections.

A select group of 100 female CEOs and entrepreneurs in the fields of tech, politics, fashion, and enter tainment from the East Coast joined 100 female counterpar ts from the West Coast as well other female influencers, thought leaders, and stars like Gwyneth Paltrow, Drew Barrymore, and Tyra Banks.

A “pop-up conference” at the W Hotel then featured panel discussions covering topics MAY 2016 ISSUE

KLM of interest including leadership, branding, feminism, and disruption.

All staff contracted to suppor t the flight and the event—including flight crew— were women. In fact, the pilot and co-pilot selected for the flight were both sisters.

Airlines have staged in-flight conferences or seminars before. Most recently Qantas and Delta each coordinated special TEDx talks in the skies, but this was the first such event tailored exclusively for women, in collaboration with an internationally recognised women’s publication.

The event drew positive attention from the press, including a compelling focus story on Quartz and a profile piece on Media and Entertainment site WWD . News sites USA Today and ABC News also covered JetBlue’s contributions to this special “PowerTrip.”

KLM has become the first airline in the world to offer customers booking, check-in confirmation, electronic boarding passes and flight status updates via Facebook Messenger .

Customers can opt-in on the Messenger service when making their original bookings on KLM.com.

This is an extension of KLM having used Messenger as a customer services tool in 2015. According to KLM President and CEO Pieter Elbers, “Last year, we activated the Messenger button on our Facebook Page, allowing customers to contact KLM even more directly. Cases increased by 40%, which shows customers appreciate this form of communication.

“We believe we should be where our customers are, and therefore Messenger and KLM are a good fit.

Posting to his timeline on Facebook , David Marcus, Vice President of Facebook Messaging Products, said of the development: “This is one that I’ve been personally eager to solve for a while. Removing stress, and complication from air travel...Goodbye forgetting the combination of your frequent flyer alphanumerical number and password to obtain your boarding pass, and holding for a long time on the phone to change flights.”

The airline released a video series on YouTube which clearly explains the process to customers, and also promoted the launch of the service with a ticket contest.

The innovation got a lot of media attention, including in the tech sector, with coverage in The Verge , Venturebeat , Engadget and The Next Web ; as well reports on Fortune and Forbes .

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take off and tune in with spotify

spot the blame BMI REGIONAL When launching four new routes from Munich (to Rostock, Southampton, Bergamo and Norköpping) bmi regional turned to photo sharing network Instagram, and worked with the “Instagramers” super-fan group. Present in over 300 cities worldwide the “Instagramers” are groups of mobile photography enthusiasts who organize competitions, meet-ups and increasingly work with brands. bmi regional already had a history of working with the Bristol (UK) group , and so for the Munich launches Instagramers Munich were brought on board.

The two moderators Björn Kindler and Anja Sauer (52k (70k followers) followers) were flown to the four new destinations over four weekends in March and April. As par t of this, they took over the bmi regional Instagram account and posted pictures showcasing each new destination . One photo in each destination included a bmi regional model MAY 2016 ISSUE

VIRGIN AMERICA plane . Social media followers had to “spot the plane” and enter the location in a competition page for a chance to win flights. Social media takeovers, where celebrities and major influencers guest edit brand social media feeds, are becoming increasingly common for brands .

Music builds strong bonds and can set people in the right mood to travel.

In this case, the two Instagramers bmi regional worked with were able to aler t their 120k followers about the campaign and new destinations. In total, Anja Sauer and Björn Kindler posted 37 destination photos on the bmi regional Instagram feed, generating 2491 likes. Björn and Anja additionally promoted the campaign on their own accounts , which netted an additional 2166 likes. The campaign and all photos were cross-posted onto bmi regional’s Facebook page. As a result of the project, bmi regional also got access to high quality photo content, some of which will be appearing in the next edition of the In-Flight Magazine.

Customers can go onto the airline’s website , choose a destination and download curated playlists which represent the spirit and flavor of that city.

Virgin America is the latest airline to launch a dedicated campaign promoting special Spotify playlists for customers to stream at 35,000 feet.

The airline is promoting its Spotify destination music collections, available on limited flights, on its social media channels and including Facebook , Twitter Instagram .

Virgin America is also offering its customers a free trial of Spotify Premium. Spotify has really taken off with airlines. A number of carriers have created destination-based playlists and popular playlists.

British Airways was the first airline to par tner with Spotify on a promotion. It featured Amsterdam, Barcelona, Valletta (Malta), Naples and Edinburgh as the launch cities put to music.

Norwegian Airlines features the Sounds of Scandinavia on its Spotify list and Delta curates a monthly music selection which play as passengers board the plane and can also be enjoyed on Spotify.

Meanwhile, American Airlines features a varied blend of music on Spotify, appealing to a broad audience and earned high praise on social media with a monthly ‘boarding playlist’ .

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#microadventures with alastair humphrey

digital

etihad virtual reality film

EASYJET

ETIHAD AIRWAYS Hot on the heels of last year’s hugely successful “Flying Reimagined” campaign featuring Oscar-winner Nicole Kidman as Etihad’s A-list brand ambassador, the Abu Dhabi-based carrier recently made headlines again with a world class sequel.

Par tnering again with Kidman, the airline is producing a fully-immersive virtual reality (VR) film .

Etihad released the teaser trailer for the film during April’s Arabian Travel Market (ATM) 2016, taking full advantage of the busy event to whet the public’s appetite and highlight their luxurious Airbus A380 interiors in vivid, eye-popping VR. Described as a “Vir tual Reality experience you won’t want to come down from” in the accompanying movie poster-like print campaign, the dazzling Reimagine trailer was made viewable to ATM attendees MAY 2016 ISSUE

via Google Cardboard and state-ofthe-ar t Samsung Gear VR headsets .

Already the trailer for the upcoming film has made headlines, for example in, Thomson Reuters Zawya , to TravelDailyMedia.com , which publishes five daily eMagazines for the travel trade across the European, Indian, Asian, Middle Eastern and Chinese markets. Etihad also notes that Reimagine marks the first time a major Hollywood actor has appeared in an all-VR production.

Although the clip is more of an extended VR commercial than an actual narrative film, the fact that Etihad’s previous Kidman commercial has been viewed more than five million times on the carrier’s YouTube channel should bode very well for all involved in this second, more elaborate, vir tual reality film project.

(or miniSo-called microadventures vacations) are proving to be hugely popular with time-strapped, tech-savvy travelers who need to unplug now and then. Looking to capture the imagination of the “microadventure” crowd and highlight a host of eclectic European destinations , easyJet recently teamed up with creative content agency VCCP Kin and the king of microadventures himself – British author and adventurer Alastair Humphreys – to offer their passengers the chance to win a microadventure of their very own .

After registering online, contest applicants were encouraged to vote on a locale for Humphreys’ next microadventure by watching a video of easyJet’s European destination cities . When they spotted the easyJet microadventure locale on the video that they thought suited Humphreys best, applicants were directed to tap stop, take a screengrab of their selection, and post the pic in the video’s comments

section. Entrants’ names were then placed in a draw to win two standard fare return tickets to any of easyJet’s microadventurewor thy destinations in Europe.

Thanks in par t to Humphrey’s soaring popularity in travel circles after being named one of National Geographic’s Adventurers of the Year in 2012 , easyJet’s uniquely interactive contest generated more than 2.7K views on Facebook and proved to be hugely popular with the carrier’s 364K Twitter followers as well. Even today on Twitter, the hashtag #microadventure continues to flourish. featuring easyJet’s YouTube clip Humphreys was also viewed over 1,000 times in just over a month and Humphries created a number of fun, low-cost #microadventure ideas which are being featured on the “Inspire Me” section of the easyJet website.

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australia’s biggest foodie

spencer

VIRGIN AUSTRALIA Airlines have been teaming up with celebrity chefs and world class restauranteurs to bring culinary delights to their passengers for years, but Virgin Australia has taken the celebrity chef par tnership to new heights with their recent search for Australia’s Biggest Foodie .

Together with popular resident chef and award-winning Australian restauranteur Luke Mangan , Virgin Australia went on a quest to discover the country’s finest ar tisan food producers, food bloggers and social media whizzes. Now, from a shor tlist of top foodie talent, Mangan and Virgin Australia will together select a “CEO” (Culinary Experience Officer) who will land the role of a lifetime. The contest winner will join Mangan on luxurious Eastern & Oriental Express rail journeys, develop content and repor t on Mangan’s por tfolio, take a Hamilton Island P&O cruise, dine in Mangan’s restaurants in Asia and the Maldives, and of course MAY 2016 ISSUE

KLM experience Virgin Australia Business class.

Winning contestants will also have their ar tisan food products showcased on Virgin Australia’s Business Class menu for an entire season. With airline and celebrity chef par tnerships of this type only gaining in popularity with passengers and foodies sharing their culinary adventures like never before on dedicated social media hubs like FoodNiche and Food Gawker expect to see many more cheeky, social media-fueled contests of this sor t moving forward.

Already generating massive buzz online, Virgin Australia’s innovative par tnership with Mangan has been written up on ETB Travel News Australia , TimeOut Sydney , Yahoo7 Travel and Lifestyle Food Australia . The contest kickedoff with a shor t video featuring Mangan himself, and it was viewed nearly 2.2K times on the Virgin Australia Facebook page .

KLM’s home hub, Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, is one of the largest and busiest in Europe – and the majority of its traffic comes from connecting passengers.

Helping these passengers get quickly through various security zones and to their next flight is paramount to the success of both the airpor t and airlines, like KLM, that use it.

Taking this challenge seriously and looking for sustainable flow management solutions, KLM and a consortium of international research par tners (funded by the European Union) are on a mission to find out if a smar t robot named SPENCER could be par t of the answer.

Following three years of careful development, SPENCER was recently put to work Schiphol airpor t, where he completed testing with tasks like scanning boarding passes and guiding KLM passengers to their

gate. Now, the consor tium par tners will use real passenger feedback to improve SPENCER going forward.

From a purely marketing perspective, the cute and helpful robot (decked out in KLM blue) can’t help but turn heads. People are inherently drawn to fascinating technology and it doesn’t get much more fascinating than a fully autonomous robot navigating his way through a busy airpor t. By getting involved in robotics, KLM also shows itself to be on the leading edge of technology.

SPENCER has been the subject of repor ts by countless news outlets, and this video released March 30 by KLM (with more than 15,000 views on YouTube and over 800,000 on Facebook) shows just how much love he gets from curious and camera-happy travellers.

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tv, print, ooh

delight

dream up, LA

JIN AIR

DELTA

Since 2008, South Korean low-cost-carrier (LCC) Jin Air has been determined to make a name for itself with hip, tech-savvy passengers in the increasingly crowded Asian market.

The humorous commercial, which depicts a 30-something male traveler getting the ride of his life on the speeding fighter, and has already garnered 133.4K views on YouTube .

Timed to air during NBA legend Kobe Bryant’s last game with the L.A. Lakers, Delta Air Lines released its f irst TV ad specif ically targeted at the competitive L.A market .

The airline is going out of its way to brand itself as a cheeky, irreverent sibling of national flag-carrier Korean Air.

The “Delight” campaign continues with a clip entitled “Standing Room Service” , which also used danger and humor to grab attention. Like “Jet Fighter Service”, this video features actors of the millennial age group and shows a fearless young passenger standing on top of a Jin Air branded biplane on a flight to South Korea.

Par t of an overall “Dream Up, L.A.” campaign, the message is that any thing dreamed up in L.A. can become a reality.

Donald Sutherland, who has voiced Delta’s series of recent inspirational ads, similarly appears here.

Hoping to attract attention from young and adventurous foreign travelers, Jin Air launched a hilarious and boldly-original television commercial marketing campaign late last year called “Delight.” Aimed squarely at a target demographic of young international passengers looking to explore Korea for the first time, the campaign began last November with a clip called “Jet Fighter Service” .

This video (just over one minute long) jestingly promised passengers a flight from Bangkok to Seoul on an “F-380” fighter jet.

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The latest commercial promising passengers to anywhere “Direct Drop Service” in Korea has become a viral sensation on YouTube, where it was viewed 450K times in about one month. So far, the fresh and often gut-bustingly funny “Delight” campaign has been written about at ETB Travel News Asia , Travel Weekly Asia , and Travel and Tour World to name a few.

The f irst TV spot, “Walkway” follows the progress of a young man with an idea through LAX, who as he progresses on the moving walkway grows up, his original idea maturing with him, until it is fully developed and on display at the airpor t.

The idea the child originally comes up with is a car toon egg astronaut named Shell. By the end of the ad, the idea is “fully hatched.” Delta posted a video of the TV spot on YouTube with the tag

line, “Ideas that star t here, set off to take on the world.” The airline also produced print ads featuring Lakers players and the message: “Every dream is a journey and we’re with you all the way. Dream up, L.A.” The TV spot, produced in English, with a Spanish-language version , is a product of the airline’s creative agency Wieden + Kennedy.

“This campaign is meant to sustain the strong momentum Delta has generated in LA over the last several years, where Delta has been the fastest-growing carrier at Los Angeles International Airpor t since 2009,” Delta states .

At the same time, and as par t of its LA-specif ic marketing campaign, Delta by reached out to LA’s hockey fans offering early-boarding privileges to any passenger arriving at LAX wearing Los Angeles Kings off icial team jerseys or caps.

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spirit of australia

french flair AIR FRANCE Following the runaway success of its “France is in the air” campaign last year, which has earned the airline more than 95 million views on YouTube , Air France has released a new series of ads on YouTube which illustrate different elements of the Air France experience.

The one minute videos, in French and English on Air France’s YouTube channel, feature the airline’s customer-centric service , cuisine , onboard comfort , terminal experience at CDG , and its SkyPriority service.

Each of these videos ties-in to customer emotions, beginning with a word that encompasses how passengers will feel after experiencing that par ticular Air France product or service: satisf ied, delighted, refreshed, radiant, relaxed. The emotive messages are accompanied by shor t bullets highlighting the main points Air France wants customers to take-away MAY 2016 ISSUE

QANTAS from the ads. For comfor t, as an example, the bullets are simply: “Private space, full lie-f lat seat-bed, HD screen and the latest movie releases”

Creative agency BWM Dentsu has just launched its first work for Qantas in a series of ads and assets about the airline’s employees.

The visuals are f ilmed on colorful minimalist sets, which complement the design of the airlines original campaign and its subsequent print and digital ads.

The campaign harkens back to an earlier “Welcome Home” campaign (video) which celebrated the personal stories of travellers being reunited with their families, and is par t of an ongoing theme of the airline’s marketing.

The campaign is unique in its pared down approach, but also a seamless continuation of a brand ethos which is well established.

The new videos have notched up a high number of views with the one focusing on service netting 1.6 million views since being released on 30 March .

As a result, one could say that with these videos, Air France is effectively building an appetite for the journey.

In these latest ads, Qantas shifts the focus to all the individuals who make up the Qantas family.

“What we took from the ‘Welcome Home’ piece that we loved, tonally and also thematically, was the humanity of it,” said Alex Carr, BMW Dentsu, Managing Director. “There’s a lot of humans in airline ads, but there’s not much humanity, and there’s a huge amount of humanity in the ‘Welcome Home’ piece because it’s true.”

The first Qantas employee to appear in the ads is Rachel Bacon, a Qantas engineer based in Brisbane (video) . Also featured are Qantas A330 captain Egon Mahr,based in Sydney, George Fontoulakis, a Baggage Handler in Melbourne, and Jennifer Catalano, a Lounge Host in Per th.

“Our people are at the hear t of everything we do. It’s not just what they do, it’s the personal passion they bring to their job that really brings the Spirit of Australia to life,” Qantas states .

To engage customers in a celebration of its people, the airline has created a campaign where prizes are themed micro-site around the employees that star in the ads.

For example, one prize passengers can win is a Qantas Flight Simulator Experience, tied into (Pilot) Egon Mahr’s love of flying.

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qantas points with christopher walken QANTAS Qantas launched a new campaign to promote hear t health and its own brand extension / health insurance product: Qantas Assure. The campaign features Hollywood star Christopher Walken as official health ambassador, encouraging Qantas customers to get moving.

The spot was the first produced for Qantas by agency With Collective. It is set in a theatre and star ts with the line ‘Here’s Christopher Walken,’ as the star walks on stage. From there, the ad involves a similar play on words, as Walken star ts “climben”, “box-en” and “dance-en”. It’s a lesser known fact that Walken trained as a dancer at the beginning of his career, so “dance-en” fits him quite well.

Besides promoting the Qantas Assure health policy, the “Walken” campaign suppor ts a health and wellness initiative championed by Australia’s National Hear t Foundation.

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The airline is encouraging par ticipation with special membership incentives, awarding program points to those members who meet set activity targets, which they can then conver t to flights or other rewards. A special Qantas Assure App links with wearables such as Fitbit, where customers’ steps could result in them getting up to 70,000 points a year, enough for a flight from Sydney to London.

“We think the idea of earning points for being active will appeal to a lot of people,” said Qantas Loyalty CEO Lesley Grant.

“When there are points up for grabs, members have told us they would take the stairs rather than the lift, park a few blocks away from the train station and do an extra lap of the park while walking the dog because they also know it is good for them.”

Qantas’ “Walken” campaign is running on TV, cinema, airpor ts, outdoor ads, and online.

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about us.

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.

MAY 2016 ISSUE

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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