We have worked with Airbus since 2010, bringing to life The Future by Airbus – a pioneering vision of sustainable aviation in 2050.

Our brief in 2012 was to continue to position Airbus as a leader in innovation and eco-efficiency, and to extend the vision from the aircraft to the skies beyond. The challenge therefore was to communicate the abstract, complicated concept of air traffic management (ATM) for consumers but also its various stakeholders, globally.

We commissioned research to create the basis for our first news story, then ran workshops with Airbus engineers to identify and validate concepts suitable for media exploitation. A team of Airbus stakeholders and our own suppliers constructed the visualisations and produce a lightshow reflecting the concepts. We then launched Smarter Skies to the outside world through an event and lightshow stunt which became a viral video. We ensured momentum for Smarter skies by developing toolkits for local market roll out.

Smarter Skies – and The Future by Airbus campaign by extension – is a forward-thinking concepts and far-reaching impact within one of the fastest-moving industries in the world. Smarter Skies enabled Airbus to put a stake in the ground on a highly debated topic

The campaign was a success in terms of global media and social media reach, but was also positively received by various stakeholders within Airbus and the wider aviation industry. Furthermore, the Smarter Skies we introduced remain relevant until change happens.

The mechanism that drove the Smarter Skies solution was a 10-country survey in May revealing passengers wanted future travel to be more sustainable, more frequent and less stressful – smarter.

We developed a news story around air travel creating a real World Wide Web, announced ahead of Farnborough Airshow accompanied by a VNF, two infographics, and compelling images.

Airbus engineers conducted research to assign a dollar value to the excess time and fuel wasted, and identified five validated solutions in supporting of smarter ATM. We brought these to life and launched Smarter Skies atop ‘The Gherkin’ with top-tier global and trade media, and key stakeholders including ATAG, SESAR and Sustainable Aviation. We supplied Smarter Skies animations, image sets, infographics and VNF.

Working with specialist designers, we created a large-scale lightshow to project a visual narrative of the inefficiencies of current ATM systems, filmed in central Berlin and seeded on social media.

Phase 1:

o 98 pieces of coverage across 22 countries

o 95% of coverage featured quotes from Charles Champion, Executive Vice President of Engineering at Airbus – with over half featuring branded images

Phase 2:

o 536 pieces of coverage across 37 countries

o The Airbus Smarter Skies VNF received 80,000+ views

o 680,000+ people saw the Facebook post hosting the lightshow video – the greatest reach ever for Airbus on Facebook

o 8,000+ new Twitter followers

o Tweets about the lightshow secured 6x the usual reach and were @Airbus’ most popular ever with 500+ retweets

o The lightshow video garnered 165,000+ views on YouTube

ROI

o PR value: €9,031,363 EUR

o Fees and costs: €600,000 EUR

o Smarter Skies continues – collateral used in 25 regional and industry events since launch