In many countries consumers don’t know KLM is a Dutch airline, let alone know about their promise to offer their passengers 'Journeys of Inspiration'. We needed to make a big impact, to reach our objectives: increase brand preference and increase awareness of the brand promise.

By connecting the real world (a physical KLM plane) to the digital space (profile pictures on social network pages) we succeeded. KLMs tiled plane became 'our' co-created plane. We revamped an old Dutch tradition for this purpose: we asked social network members to convert their profile picture into a traditional Delft blue tile, featuring their face and their personal words of inspiration.

The film inviting people to participate in the creation of KLM’s 'tiled' plane, reached 500,000+ views on YouTube.

'Likes' of KLMs (global plus local) Facebook pages increased by 120,000+.

After 3 weeks, 120,000+ tiles were created.

On average consumers spent 5.13 minutes on our site.

In key markets brand preference rose from 14% to 19%.

Print magazines, newspapers and hundreds of blogs wrote positively about the campaign.

A special press event revealing the plane generated substantial free publicity.

On this event KLM welcomed celebrities as their guest, whose faces were on some of the tiles on the ‘tiled plane’.

The ‘Making Of’ film collected 750,000+ views on YouTube.

The plane still generates publicity on airports around the world.

Objectives: increase brand preference and increase awareness of KLMs brand promise 'Journeys Of Inspiration' around the world, and specifically in KLMs key markets US, Brazil, Russia, China, Germany, UK, Norway and Sweden.

Target audience: affluent people in these markets that take at least 2 international trips a year, either for business or for leisure. Research confirmed KLM brand preference was very modest in these markets. Awareness of KLMs brand promise was close to nothing.

We started off by seeding a ‘Delft Blue film’ in KLM owned media and third party blogs. In this film we explained the Dutch Delft blue tradition and invited internet users around the world to participate. After the initial pick by the audience, we boosted the reach of social media posts from tile creators via sponsored stories and reached out to online and offline press. We then organised a big press event around the revealing of the tiled plane at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. Then we created the 'Making Of KLMs Tiled Plane' film and seeded it. On top of that we created personalised videos for the 4000 winners, showing how their personally created tile was attached to the real KLM plane. Finally we reached out to local press in markets where the tiled plane landed in the first weeks after its take-off.

Hundreds of blogs wrote positively about the Tile and Inspire campaign, as well as magazines and newspapers. Much of this was a result of the press event in which we revealed KLMs tiled plane.

In key markets KLM’s brand preference rose from 14% to 19%.

The 'Making Of KLM's Tiled Plane' film alone collected 750,000+ views on YouTube.

The Delft blue animation film, inviting people to participate in the creation of the tiled plane, reached 500,000+ views on YouTube.

We were able to measure thousands of Facebook posts and Tweets (sentiment 98.8% positive).

'Likes' of KLM’s (global plus local) Facebook pages increased by 120,000+.

On average consumers spent 5:13 minutes on our site.

120,000+ tiles were created.The plane still generates free publicity when it lands in airports around the world.

We decided to revamp the old Dutch tradition of creating Delft blue tiles for reaching our objectives. By connecting a real live event (the creation of a unique physical KLM plane) to the digital space (profile pictures on social network pages) we made a cocktail of news that was interesting for both offline and online media. We asked social network members to convert their profile picture into a traditional Delft blue tile, featuring their face and their personal words of inspiration. The 4,000 most inspirational personal tiles, would be selected for a spot on the body of a real KLM plane. Via this mechanism we communicated at the same time: Dutch, Airline, Social and Inspirational. Both the road to the moment of revealing of the plane and the revealing of the plane itself were carefully documented to generate maximum free publicity around the event.

We did not have the advertising budgets to outspend local airlines, in markets where often consumers don’t know KLM is a Dutch airline. Therefore, we decided to create a PR-event with a big impact to reach our objectives: increase brand preference and increase awareness of KLMs brand promise. KLMs Dutch heritage, together with its promise to offer its passengers 'Journeys Of Inspiration' gave us the opportunity to build a unique event that – from different angles – offered an interesting story for both online and offline media. Driven by media coverage and online buzz, we succeeded in reaching our objectives.