In a period with high interest in consumer goods and low interest in airline tickets, saturated with ads and challenged by low conversion rates, Etihad Airways reimagined the traditional way of advertising during Black Friday, and turned consumer goods into an ally in the fight for sales. In this strategic campaign, we connected products to Etihad’s own offering - airline tickets - and overachieved its already high sales and conversion goals, shattering all records in the airline’s 20-year history.

The airline industry is generally a highly competitive one. Therefore, airlines need to find smart and intelligent ways to stand out and communicate with consumers. Black Friday is an occasion where consumers are prepared and willing to purchase items, but airline tickets do not see the increase in sales that other industries enjoy during this period.

Black Friday has become synonymous with consumerism and is characterized by doorbuster deals and intense advertising campaigns. Embraced as a major shopping day, brands vigorously compete for attention and share of voice on all platforms, and rightfully so: enthusiastic shoppers actively seek out the most enticing deals to make a purchase.

Etihad Airways, the UAE’s national airline, wanted to build on the momentum of its 2022 Black Friday Sale. For 2023, the task was to increase Pre-sale Subscriptions to 12K, Bookings by 15% and Digital Revenue by 15%.

Through a multi-channel approach for this global sale, our aim was to disrupt retail focus and inspire travel aspirations.

Black Friday is a challenging period in which advertisers are known to increase their ad spend significantly. In 2023, the U.S. market’s Sponsored Products ad-spend increased by 55% and Sponsored Brands spend by 61% compared to 2022. Despite interest and deals beginning days and even weeks before Black Friday, conversion rates decreased by 5.1% for Sponsored Products and by 3.8% for Sponsored Brands. (Pacvue, Insights from Black Friday 2023)

Etihad Airways found itself facing an unconventional challenge: how do you turn shoppers into passengers in a period heavily dominated by retail?

To meet Etihad Airways’ objective, we knew we had to somehow capitalize on shoppers' searches and strategically optimize our campaign to break through the noise and increase sales.

Google trends showed that high-value items like electronics & home appliances, dominated Black Friday search interest. Deal-seeking was active, with 70% of shopping-related searches containing “black friday” occurring in October and the days leading up to the main event. It became evident that people had wishlists and were waiting for the best deal to purchase them.

People also had a bucket-list of destinations they wanted to visit, but despite airline tickets being a high value item, it had very low top-of-mind recall during this sale period.

Introducing Etihad Airway’s Black Friday Sale campaign, one that capitalizes on current search trends, to turn competing brands into allies. In this campaign, we nudged shoppers when they were browsing with high purchase intent. We suggested they buy an Etihad ticket during Black Friday and fly to that destination to buy the product they were searching for, using the money saved on our fares.

Imagine a customer searching for a special Black Friday sale on an iPhone, which is what a very large number of people tend to do before Black Friday.

That customer’s search would be taken over by us, and we would infiltrate their search results by presenting to them a more attractive option: with our incredibly low fares, why not just fly to New York, and with the money you’ve saved, buy that iPhone you were looking for?

That was our big idea. Send people to places where they could buy the things they were searching for. Turning shoppers into passengers.

The campaign overperformed on every metric.

Campaign CTR soared at 219% above benchmark (Google).

24K new pre-sale subscriptions led to a 33% increase in the CRM database for future campaigns, and 1.8M website visits resulted in a 56% increase YOY in bookings.

Furthermore, Digital Revenue was up by 35% YOY and Digital Share of Revenue increased from 34% to 46% YOY.

We also achieved the highest-ever revenue coming from Paid Search in a single day, +60% YOY.

ROAS was +69% YOY but the biggest achievement was the highest revenue from a digital sale in the airline’s 20-year history, which surpassed the previous record by 48%

Even though this was a tactical campaign, it created a spill-over effect; Etihad Airways brand lift increased in key markets: Canada +53% | US +37% | UK +16% | Australia +41%

The strategic approach successfully converted deal-seeking shoppers into ticket-booking passengers, achieving remarkable results for Etihad and redefined the traditional approach to Black Friday ads.

Rather than treat consumer goods as competition, unbeknownst to hundreds of brands, we turned them into partners. This creative alternative to traditional Black Friday promotions delivered a distinctive proposition for shoppers around the world: buy a ticket from Etihad and get the product from other brands for free.