When it comes to communication and public relations, the aviation industry has been known to be creative and innovative with its strategies.
Aviation is a sector that is actively managing its brand and image in light of fluctuating prices and customer experience concerns. However, with creative marketing, airlines can successfully connect with passengers and reinforce their positioning in the market. Below, you will find some vivid examples of the programs implemented by airlines in the past few years.
Examples of creative marketing in aviation
The Stopover program
Iceland Air launches something called the Stopover program, allowing passengers to visit the continent for up to seven nights at no cost with the purchase of a ticket to over 20 other European destinations. To advertise the program, Icelandair invested in a substantial content marketing campaign to promote both Iceland as the country and the deal itself.
The campaign was hosted on the company’s official website and was linked to its social media accounts. The winning participants were given a 48-hour stopover opportunity along with a personal guide who helped them move around and enjoy a memorable tour all over their destination site.
The entire journey and experience of the winners were captured in a video format to be shared across social media platforms to garner campaign reviews. The campaign hashtag #MyStopover was used extensively to promote the promo and the airline in order to encourage their passengers to use it, as well as to share their trip stories that would contribute to the campaign.
Things to do Between Meetings
This simple idea was implemented by Virgin America in a series of blogs they posted for travelers providing pointers on things they can do in a variety of places they were traveling to. It provided a simple guide of things to do in just one hour. This campaign focused on encouraging customers to venture out and make the most of their travel.
Be There - a campaign by Emirates
Emirates chose seven Globalistas from their employees and sent them to the destinations across all seven continents. These globalistas were to travel across their designated land and make a film sharing their experiences. They partnered with National Geographic to amplify the reach of these films on social media. The campaign’s goal was to showcase the brand's passion and enthusiasm for global travel.
Experimental strategies
KLM - The Surprise
The Dutch airline KLM decided to find out what its users liked. It referred to the social media sources to track users, who had mentioned their travel plans, stating they were flying with the airline. After identifying their customers, the company surprised their guests with the gifts while they were still waiting at the airport. This unique idea is a good example of the experimental marketing.
Hello Kitty campaign
The renowned airline EVA Air in Taiwan tried something very experimental to capture some extra attention. Thus, they decided to decorate one of their planes with designs inspired by the Hello Kitty cartoon, even dressing up the flight crew as cast characters from the show. This gained lots of publicity and goodwill, since Hello Kitty is a very popular cartoon franchise in the Asian countries.
The Upgrade Challenge by Air France
With the growth of technology, brands are constantly feeling the need to use innovative strategies to bolster the brand recall. A recent example of this trend is Air France. To illustrate, their passengers were competing for a seat in the business class by using the Cloud Slicer application on their phones. This was a good way to promote business class in Asia while having a little fun.
Such examples of creatively using technology and experimentation are a perfect evidence of a good brand strategy. Considering the positive feedbacks for each project, it goes without saying that consumer engagement is the key to a successful marketing campaign.
