Category: Best integrated content campaign
Advertiser: AIR CANADA
Product/Service: ENROUTE MAGAZINE
Agency: SPAFAX
Editor-In-Chief/Enroute: Ilana Weitzman (Spafax Canada)
Art Director/Design: Nathalie Cusson (Spafax Canada)
President/Content Marketing: Raymond Girard (Spafax Canada)
Writer: Sarah Musgrave (Spafax Canada)
Photographer: Virginia Macdonald (Spafax Canada)
Photo Editor: Julien Beaupre Ste-Marie (Spafax Canada)
Media placement: Magazine - In-Flight - November, 2011
Media placement: Digital - Online Web Site - November, 2011
Media placement: App - IPhones, Android Phones - November, 2011
Campaign Description
Breaking through the clutter is becoming more of a challenge for brands. With a constant bombardment of media, the attention of the customer is being pulled in many different directions. For marketers and brands, branded entertainment is a way to distinguish a brand and provide value to an audience.
Branded entertainment is about storytelling. Entertaining and informing an audience through content seen as complementary to a brand's message. It can create positive links between a brand’s image and the message of the content. The goal is to balance the ‘branding’ and ‘entertainment’. Entertainment is about creating an environment with which people would want to voluntarily engage and interact. Pushing the branding too far can result in a pushback from the audience where a video is deemed an ad rather than branded entertainment (also known as Advertainment).
With the increase in new media capabilities and consumption of mobile content, on top of traditional channels, branded entertainment has taken off in recent years. Brands have demonstrated great results through video campaigns, social media, augmented reality, social gaming and apps, to name but a few.
Increasingly, brands are creating branded entertainment that lives across multiple platforms, creating campaigns that provide valuable engagement on different levels.
Effectiveness
The objective was to associate the Air Canada brand with Canadian cuisine. More than just an airline, Air Canada is a lifestyle brand that cares about the entire passenger journey, on plane and at destination. As a goal, it closely associates itself with the evolution of Canadian culture and the development and fostering of Canadian talent. Cuisine, being an important expression of Canadian culture, is a natural fit for the Air Canada brand.
The challenge was: how can an airline brand credibly position itself as a reference on fine dining in a country as vast as Canada? The answer to this challenge was exciting.
Over the course of 4 months, enRoute got local recommendations from top food professionals in each region. Then, based on that list, our writer criss-crossed the country dining anonymously at each restaurant to determine the Top 10 best new restaurants. Winners were selected based on chefs who were advancing the country’s culinary identity and an overall dining experience that had a significant impact on Canadian restaurant culture.
The results were packaged into a spectacular multi-channel campaign called Canada's Best New Restaurants that included a 32-page feature in Air Canada's enRoute in-flight magazine, an adapted feature on Air Canada's enRoute website with the winners and additional information and content plus an iPhone app allowing Air Canada passengers to find the restaurants nearest them.
Implementation
The audience was drawn to the content via a spectacular 32-page feature in Air Canada's enRoute in-flight magazine, an adapted feature on Air Canada's enRoute web site with the winners and additional information and content plus an iPhone app allowing Air Canada passengers to find the restaurants nearest them. In addition, Air Canada's enRoute partnered with Penfolds wines which added a strong brand link to the program and associated Penfolds with the country's top rated restaurants, creating a positive halo effect on their brand.
Outcome
The results for Air Canada's enRoute were incredible. The Canada's Best New Restaurants program positioned Air Canada as the pre-eminent source of credible recommendations on new restaurants in Canada.
Consumer excitement and anticipation of the selected restaurants grew leading up to the announcement day. Once the restaurant names were made public, the selected restaurants saw traffic explode with local and international diners.
Air Canada generated thousands of positive media mentions in Canadian and international media and the enRoute app, ‘enRoute Eats’, generated 5,250 downloads after only 3.5 months.