New Zealand Marketing magazine

RSVP Grand Prix Winner

Air New Zealand and agency .99’s ‘Nothing to Hide’ is the 2009 RSVP Grand Prix winner and also takes an RSVP Customer Engagement Gold

The start of winter, 2009, was an unhappy time for many businesses. And it was particularly challenging for Air New Zealand: the recession was hammering the travel market, fluctuating fuel prices and exchange rates made fare management difficult, swine flu put off potential travellers and the International Air Transport Association was forecasting a US$9 billion industry global revenue loss for the year.

If that huge uncertainty wasn’t enough, the entry of low-cost carrier Jetstar into the local market threatened a substantial market share decrease to the national carrier’s cornerstone domestic business. This left Air New Zealand as the only full-service carrier up against two low-cost carriers, the other being Pacific Blue.

Low-cost carriers have led with the lowest price possible by omitting items like baggage and meals from the initial price and charging for them prior to or during the journey. For Air New Zealand to maintain market share, it became critical for New Zealanders to understand the difference between fully-inclusive Air New Zealand fares versus the lower non-inclusive fares.

With local travellers more susceptible to discounts and more regularly shopping around on price, the airline needed to secure their brand preference and, at the same time, with international travellers in key markets like Australia, America, Japan, the UK and China increasingly holding off on travel due to financial limitations and swine flu, significantly lift its brand profile in offshore markets.

The Big Idea

With demanding objectives and a local and global market to engage with, the campaign strategy required the creation of unique and entertaining content that could be seeded into markets in innovative ways. But in trying to generate conversations about the facts, there needed to be a big idea to tie it all together.

The single-minded proposition was this: unlike other airlines, Air New Zealand’s fares are all-inclusive. But, knowing the audience could be quite cynical about a large corporate pointing the finger, the trick was to accentuate its own positives rather than dwell on the competition’s negatives.

The campaign hit a stunning 78 percent level of awareness, with correct brand attribution at 95 percent. And 51 percent heard about the campaign through word of mouth, which demonstrated the power of the content.

With the help of advertising agency .99, the idea was born: Air New Zealand has ‘Nothing to Hide’, because the price you pay includes everything, up front. And the transparency of the fares was communicated by featuring real Air New Zealand staff wearing nothing more than body painted uniforms and a grin.

Passionate people were the airline’s real point of difference, so they were placed at the heart of the campaign.

‘Nothing to Hide’ became a conversational phrase that had easy recall and spoke of honesty and transparency. And this flowed through every piece of communication, with the campaign being launched internationally.

Caught in the web

The global seeding strategy included housing all campaign content on a ‘Nothing to Hide’ YouTube channel, placing targeted advertising on YouTube, Facebook and Google and engaging with public relations companies in Australia and the United States.

Combining the best of traditional and non-traditional media, the marketing team used a social media monitoring tool to identify and communicate with key online influencers and the campaign’s viral activity was augmented through a focused investment into New Zealand television to build immediate reach and engagement and maximise the campaign presence.

Gin Wigmore’s addictive track ‘Under My Skin’ portrayed an innocence that underpinned the Air New Zealand staff having their bodies painted for the cause, with the campaign effectively demonstrating New Zealanders’ can-do attitude, transparency and genuineness.

The campaign began with a behind-the-scenes video of the hero ad that was sent to influential bloggers, who were used to get people to discover and engage with the content. This created a groundswell of curiosity.

A 45-second ad was then released online, with a 30-second cut-down on network television in New Zealand.

The concept was then leveraged for retail promotional sales with a two day integrated sale, ‘The Great Air New Zealand Take Off’, which used eDM, online and press. This gave a significant revenue boost, with domestic revenue up 30 percent, Pacific revenue up 96 percent, Tasman revenue up 40 percent, and total storefront revenue up 33 percent compared to the same two days from the previous three weeks.

An in-flight safety video with body-painted flight crew called ‘The Bare Essentials of Safety’ was also launched on a special flight hosted by the video stars. The safety video was then posted online, followed by some of the bloopers captured during filming.

Taking flight

Since Jetstar’s launch in New Zealand, Air New Zealand has maintained market share in the domestic markets that Jetstar operates in—a stunning result given the potential for dramatic share loss.

The campaign hit a stunning 78 percent level of awareness, with correct brand attribution at 95 percent. And 51 percent heard about the campaign through word of mouth (PR, family/friends, and online), which demonstrated the power of the content.

The extensive New Zealand PR coverage included 20/20, Close Up, Prime News, Sunday Star-Times, New Zealand Herald, Dominion Post, Waikato Times, nzherald.co.nz, stuff.co.nz, travel.msn.co.nz and spareroom.co.nz.

The international campaign captured the imagination of people around the world and, by late September 2009, Air New Zealand had 10,228,632 unique YouTube views across the ‘Nothing to Hide’ channel. The safety video numbers alone meant that nearly five million people engaged with Air New Zealand for up to four-and-a-half minutes each (the full duration of the safety video).

The previous New Zealand YouTube travel content record was 1.2 million and ‘Nothing to Hide’ topped that by a factor of seven. The safety video content also hit number one on the global Adage Viral Video charts and set a new all-time record for weekly views. It now holds the YouTube all-time number one spot for the New Zealand Travel and Events category and the ‘Nothing to Hide’ 45 second spot is at number two.

Over two million viewers returned to watch the content again, with key Air New Zealand markets dominating the viewing numbers, including two million from the US and nearly one million from Japan. The UK and Australia were also strongly represented, with news.com.au driving more than 100,000 views in Australia (four people from Chad and one brave soul from oppressed Myanmar also managed to watch the campaign).

YouTube users ranked the content 4.5 to 5 stars out of five and there were 3041 comments posted about the campaign on the site, including substantial commentary around the greater likelihood of visiting New Zealand.

220,000 of the viewers went on to the Air New Zealand nothingtohide.co.nz website and 93 percent of these visits were from people who hadn’t visited the Air New Zealand website before.

Massive international PR uptake included CNN, Fox, the Today Show, CBS News, Newsweek, The Huffington Post, The New York Times, The Telegraph, The Economist, The Sun, Australian Channel 7 (for five minutes) and 11 Japanese nationwide news programmes (worth NZ$1.6 million).

Twitter posts about Air New Zealand spiked from 80 per day to 26,000 in one day.

And finally, showing Air New Zealand had really hit the mainstream jackpot, American Idol host and celebrity wrangler Ryan Seacrest put some of the campaign elements on his website and described it as “one very naked reason to fly Air New Zealand”.