Various options of overseas destinations and competitive airfares left Chinese travellers spoiled for choices. Additionally, China Southern(1) and China Eastern(2) recently offered direct flights to New Zealand.

While travellers had many expectations in their trips, Air New Zealand found that food was probably the topic most talked about in their social circle; we also learned from an agency qualitative research that food was important to Southern Chinese, but New Zealand food was not seen to occupy any distinctive cuisine that appealed to them.(3)

We wanted to explore the fresh communication direction provided by the uniqueness of New Zealand food and expand its role of delighting and surprising travellers. Hence, our brief was to develop an engagement programme with a holistic digital/social plan that drives brand preference and sales for Air New Zealand when a traveller decides to embark on a journey of delicious discoveries to New Zealand.

Our HTML5 branded game was available from 31st March till 22nd April 2016. It featured food from the four places visited by XFUN, i.e. Auckland lamb chop, Hawke’s Bay salmon, Wellington crab, and Dunedin seafood. Players could select any dish and must finish it in 30 seconds by tapping their mobile screen for a chance to win a pair of return New Zealand flight tickets.

To increase traffic to the game, we placed a 30-second pre-roll as well as online banners on iQIYI, Sohu, and Toutiao online and mobile TVs, plus the Eyepetizer app. We also promoted Feast New Zealand Challenge on Weibo, sharing details about the prizes and had mini games, where, in one instance, we asked fans connect the four New Zealand destinations to their respective dishes. In another instance, they were asked to leave a comment on their favourite one of four New Zealand foods.