Social and Influencer > Craft
BLAH AIRLINES
ELEVEN, San Francisco / VIRGIN / 2015
Awards:
Overview
Credits
Overview
Execution
We created a fake airline, named BLAH Airlines, to embody everything that’s wrong with generic carriers. We launched it with a 5hour and 45minute recreation of a cross-country flight onboard BLAH, from takeoff to landing. It captured all the reasons why flying most airlines is so painful. The film lived on YouTube as the longest pre-roll video ever and let viewers exit BLAH to go to the Virgin America website.
Throughout the film, we seeded ways to be in touch with BLAH online and brought them to life. So viewers who dug deeper could interact with BLAH through various channels.
Outcome
Together with its trailer, our web film garnered over one million views—with no paid media. We were reviewed along studio films and compared to Warhol, Buñuel, Lynch, and Dalí. The campaign was spotlighted across news outlets such as CBS, NBC, ABC, and FOX, generating 138 million earned media impressions. The campaign resulted in a 621% increase in Virgin America conversations. And despite people’s short attention spans, the average viewing time for our film was over five minutes.
Strategy
Virgin came to us and said they wanted to target business travelers. They typically book just a few weeks out, and we needed to get them to try Virgin America. When we looked into the demographic, we noticed that they’re a lot like us: They’re creative, entrepreneurial, and don’t align with the status quo. But for some reason, they’re flying boring, generic airlines that aren’t reflective of who they are.
So this was very much a switcher campaign: How do we entice those people who look
like us, who are aligned with us, and how do we put a mirror in front of their face and show them, “Wake up. You’re on the wrong airline. You need to get on Virgin America.”
More Entries from Use of Video in Social and Influencer
24 items
More Entries from ELEVEN
24 items
