British Airways: DON'T FLY CAMPAIGN

Credits & Description:

Advertiser: BRITISH AIRWAYS
Agency: BBH
Category: Best Use of Integrated Media
Account Supervisor: Mark Whiteside (BBH)
Creative Director: Hamish Pinnell (BBH)
Art Director: Christopher Clarke (BBH)
Art Director: Emmanuel Saint M'Leux (BBH)
Creative Director: Justin Moore (BBH)
Copywriter: Simon Pearse (BBH)
Copywriter: Matthew Moreland (BBH)

Effectiveness
Our aim was to create an online activation that would deepen engagement with our Olympic and Paralympic campaign. Our initial KPIs had estimated 100 thousand uses of our customisable activation. By games end, we had achieved over 5.5 million.Through above the line support, digital paid media support and promotion from our own social networks we garnered 42 million activation impressions across the games periods. Users spent an astonishing 60 thousand hours personalising our 60 second TV commercial.We achieved just under 56 thousand social mentions of the activation online, the highest ever number for a British Airways branded activation.

Execution
We developed a Super Bowl Super Social creative media approach, it used impactful film in high rating TV spots that sparked excitement and pushed people to branded digital and social engagement platforms. The Super Bowl TV commercial showed a British Airways 777, full of brimming Olympics fans, driving through the streets of London disembarking at the Olympic stadium.The Super Social element dove tailed this TV commercial. Using Google Street View API, we created a customisable version of the commercial that lived on Facebook and ba.com. The app prompted people to type in their UK post code and simply press go. They would then be shown a personalised version of the commercial featuring a BA plane driving past their address with Google Street View. The personalised commercial finished with our Don’t Fly campaign message and #HomeAdvantage hash-tag that created a pathway to further engagement in social media.

Strategy
In 2012, British Airways turned the notion of Olympic sponsorship on its head. Rather than ask how the Olympics could benefit BA, we asked what could BA do for the London Olympics. Our competitors were local and global Olympic sponsors who commanded far superior media budgets. In response we developed a 360° integrated campaign that would generate its own earned media and give the brand a unique and legitimate role during the games. Our insight was based on the power of home crowd support. If we could rally people to stay at home during the games to be the home advantage then the chances of our athletes Olympic success would improve.To bring this insight to life, we did something no airline had ever done before. We asked the nation to not fly during the games but stay at home and support the teams by being the home advantage.