Haven’t you heard? Marketing, communication, and public relations are essential, especially in the competitive airline industry. With a plethora of similar companies competing for customers, airline marketing campaigns tend to be huge budget and super creative.
Airline content marketing often includes website content, blogs, applications, and social media strategy to attract and retain their audience.
Among other things, airlines are also striving to go viral with their campaigns to generate buzz and outshine their competitors. Thus, enthralling video campaigns help click with passengers and amplify market positioning.
In this post, we will go over 5 of the best marketing campaigns run by airlines in the past few years.
Air New Zealand – Your Middle Earth Airlines
Amid the Hobbit movie’s popularity, Air New Zealand entered into an agreement with the production companies. Under the contract, the carrier’s marketing campaign included a Hobbit-branded aircraft and a Hobbit-themed safety video called The Most Epic Safety Video Ever Made.
The company forran the upcoming release of the latest movie with an elfin stewardess opening the safety video in Middle-earth, leading actors as airline passengers, and orcs in oxygen masks. The clip is a romp through the Tolkien universe: usual airline passengers could fly to Hobbiton, Mordor, and the Iron Mountains. The video was a nice addition to the carrier’s existing set of unconventional in-flight videos.
KLM – Surprise Campaign
Another airline company that has made a splash (for better or for worse) is KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. The carrier decided to surprise their passenger with something enjoyable to make their wait more pleasant. The airlines went with the social media style and presented the KLM Surprise initiative.
During the holiday influx, the company’s team monitored passengers who shared their flights on social media like Foursquare and Twitter. After identifying the passenger, the Surprise team analyzed their social media profiles and then surprised their passengers at their gates with small personalized gifts.
Although this campaign goes well beyond traditional marketing, the results of this activity speak for themselves. The company’s profile got more than 17,500 followers on Foursquare, a Twitter reach of more than 2 million, and over 250,000 views on YouTube.
WestJet – Christmas Miracle
In December 2013, Canadian airline WestJet made an amazing Christmas gift to its passengers. The team set up a digital kiosk at departure gates where passengers would scan their boarding passes. After reading the data from the card, a “live” Santa Claus appeared on the screen, against the background of a dressed-up Christmas tree, wearing a traditional costume.
He would “recognise” the person standing in front of the mystery box, greet him, and ask travellers what they wanted for Christmas. WestJet employees took notes behind the scenes, and then scrambled to purchase, wrap, and label gifts for the passengers when they landed.
The surprised, flabbergasted, and emotional reactions of the gift’s recipients made for a cute video. As a result, the campaign video has racked up an amazing 44 million views on YouTube and 13,000 Facebook likes. Inspired by mind-blowing success, the airline company ran its Christmas campaign in upcoming years and kept on engaging travellers and the marketing world.
Icelandair – Iceland Stopover
Icelandair’s Stopover program allows travellers to experience a twist on the normal service. Thus, passengers had an opportunity to stopover in Iceland at no additional airfare for up to seven days. The program was available to passengers traveling to 23 destinations in Europe and 21 destinations in North America.
As a promo, the carrier launched a manifold content marketing campaign that featured a contest. The contest winners were awarded a 48-hour stopover and a personal guide.
Icelandair’s marketing model was reinforced with the hashtag #MyStopover, which motivated passengers to share their stopover experiences on social media. The airline company has been doing it for decades now with followers still contributing content to the campaign and boosting their social media exposure.
You can find the programme here: https://www.icelandair.com/en-gb/flights/stopover/
JetBlue – Reach Across The Aisle
In 2016, Jet Blue’s marketing campaign was a tongue-in-cheek reprimand amid the growing polarisation of the American political environment. In their ad, an airline company challenged 150 passengers to lay aside diverging views and embrace compromise to become at one with each other on a single destination.
If they could come to an agreement, they would win round-trip tickets. A social masterpiece of Mullen Lowe, the marketing stunt reinforced JetBlue’s effort to remind people of harmony at the time of political rancor.
The campaign fetched more than 600 traditional media placements, garnering more than 300 million impressions worldwide.
The Bottom Line
In a digitised environment, innovative marketing has become a priority for global businesses. Out-of-the-box promotion is what helps attract more customers and generate sales. This is especially true for airline businesses.
Without some unique and never before seen marketing approaches, you will fail to retain the customers and increase their loyalty. We hope that the aforementioned advertising trailblazers have helped you to get a better idea of what your marketing efforts should be like.
Article written by Marie Barnes. Marie Barnes is a Marketing Communication Manager at LinksManagement link building service and is a writer for gearyoda. She is an enthusiastic blogger interested in writing about technology, social media, work, travel, lifestyle, and current affairs.
