Welcome Icelandair to Seattle!

Today marks the beginning of the new era in travel to Scandinavia and Europe. Icelandair flight 681 arrived yesterday evening on time after it's 7 1/2 hour trip from Keflavik. Today, the return, flight "Iceair 681" departed today at 4:21pm headed back for Rekjavik. While the flight was not fully booked, it went out with a very respectable load for its first flight.

Looking at its forward bookings, it appears that, at least for the summer period, Icelandair's flights are going to be fairly full in Economy and Economy Comfort. However, in Saga Class, I discovered the bookings were almost non-existant: only 1-2 passengers per flight for the month of August; September on cursory examination didn't look especially better.

What is the problem? The problem is threefold: 1) The Economy - people don't want to pay huge amounts of money to fly anywhere this summer. 2) The price: Icelandair's Business Class pricing has been higher than its transatlantic competition from Seattle, especially SAS who, in its last few days of operation here, is still trying to keep its flights full. 3) The product: Here is the area in which Icelandair will have the greatest challenge. Their Business Class (called Saga) is roughly the equivalent of a domestic First Class service: No sleeper seats, seat pitch at 39 inches and a 7.5 hour flight. All of its competition in Business Class offer sleeper seats as well as advanced lounges at their hubs. While Icelandair does have a Business Class lounge at Keflavik, due to the relatively short connecting time between flights, it would be difficult for a business person to take advantage of its services.

Unfortunately for Icelandair, it is impractical to modify its premium product to meet the needs of a single route. However, the SEA-KEF route is the longest route in it's network now and it would seem some kind of strategy change is going to be necessary in order to achieve better loads in the front of the aircraft...and to be clear: Icelandair needs good loads in Saga Class at a reasonable yield, otherwise, this experiment in connecting Seattle with Scandinavia over Keflavik will be a short one.

For now, Icelandair is here and with their unique product targeted not only at the business traveler, but the leisure traveler between Seattle and Scandinavia, they will continue to provide a vital link between Seattle and the north of Europe. This will be especially inportant after July 31, with the last SAS flight from Seattle to Copenhagen will close 42 years of SAS service to Seattle.

The "Bare Essentials" of Air New Zealand

If you are involved in the airline industry at all, by now you most likely have heard of Air New Zealand's new campaign called "The Bare Essentials". If you haven't, then in the spirit of "a picture is worth a thousand words", have a look at the latest Air New Zealand advert running in the New Zealand domestic market (and of course, 'round the world, courtesy of YouTube.com.):



Did you watch carefully? The pilots and flight attendants are "sans clothing" or in other words, naked. Go figure it would be the Kiwi's who would come up with something so bold, so original and so over the top that it gets a whole realm of emotions (or hormones) going when you watch it. More than that, it makes me want to fly Air New Zealand. Why? Well, it isn't because their pilots and flight attendants are naked (OK, they are in the ad, but I can assure you they won't be on the plane). What it IS about is the fact that Air New Zealand, while being a world class airline with a large number of excellent professionals, doesn't take itself too seriously. The idea that it puts forward is that New Zealand is a fun place and the people are very vivacious and just plain fun to be around. Anyone who has ever met a Kiwi or been to New Zealand knows that is true.

So what does the ad convey?

Air New Zealand's fares have nothing to hide. In other words, no added fees, no added surcharges; what you get is what you get. In today's world of "ancillary revenue" and "optimization of revenue streams" in which airlines are trying to find as many ways to separate you from the money in your wallet when you fly them, Air New Zealand won't nickel and dime you. It's somewhat hard to believe that these days, since there seems to be a perception amongst passengers these days that airlines are out to screw them. If those of you reading this don't believe that statement, go ask someone in the who has flown on any major carrier, especially in the USA, and ask them how they feel about their experience. You'll get varying responses from benign to visceral, but all with one theme - I paid more than I should have.

So why is this ad, that is really made for the domestic New Zealand market, having such an impact outside of New Zealand? Well, for one thing because you have to be blind for this ad not to get your attention and even if you had some kind of visual impairment, the brilliant music and the few words spoken during the ad convey the same message and idea of fun. The other thing is that there are so many people that have or use YouTube.com or Facebook or Twitter that the concept of social networking as a means of advertisement is starting to have some effect. The idea that a video can be screened across the world in as quickly as two minutes (about the amount of time it took me to post the ad to my blog) takes advertising to a completely new level. It reaches different audiences in different ways that could only be conceived by someone with a significant amount of creative forethought about how the Internet brings us together as a community; and make no mistake about that: The Internet, for good or ill, has now brought us together as a global community in a way that no other medium can.

For an airline who is interested in changing its image or repositioning its brand, by finding the right message that can resonate in a way that will catch the attention of millions of people, developing a creative way of conveying that message and then simply post it to specific websites, it can effectively target market its product in a way it could never do before. The best part is that is it virtually cost free once the advert is made.

The more important aspect of this notion of spreading an image around the world in an instant to your target customers using the Internet is the idea that if that concept is really liked, it can be expanded to other areas with the same positive effect.

For example, Air New Zealand, after the wild worldwide success of that first advert has decided to "brand" their safety announcements by creating a new set of in-flight safety videos, bringing the "Bare Essentials of Safety" to a Air New Zealand 737 near you and will be expanded to the entire fleet in the near future. Anyone who has seen the original ad knows it's certainly attention grabbing, but have a look at the safety video:



Now, would you watch this video every time you got on board an Air New Zealand flight? If the answer is no, I'd say you were probably not telling the truth. At the very minimum, you'd be curious, at the opposite end of the spectrum, well...you get the idea. The point is that you'll watch the video and know more about the emergency features of that airplane, which just might save your life in a real emergency. Now while that might sound a tad melodramatic, the reality is that it is true (ask the folks on the US Airways flight that landed in the Hudson River).

This demonstrates the power of advertising and how applying something completely crazy and different will get your attention, for good or bad. This is the entire point of advertising: It gets our attention. You might love it or hate it, but if you have a reaction to it, that means that the message got through and that is the whole intent of advertising (well not the whole intent, but this is a blog, not a Master's thesis on advertising).

So, is Air New Zealand crazy? No. Far from it. They have some extremely talented and broad minded people in their marketing department as well as some very courageous people willing to bare it all to make a point. After all, these pilots and flight attendants decided to take their clothes off, get their bodies painted in body art - and extremely good body art it was; you really had to look to tell that they were "without clothes". Air New Zealand should be very rightfully be proud of their people, for they are the face of their airline...quite literally.

The "Bare Essentials" of Air New Zealand will probably go down in history as some of the most creative, innovative and courageous video and print advertising. More importantly for Air New Zealand, it sets them apart as a very different airline, a fun airline; one that is very professional, but one that doesn't take itself too seriously. That's a great combination.

Consider that flying from the west coast of the USA to the South Pacific takes 12-18 hours and from Europe to New Zealand closer to 24-28 hours direct, if you were going to choose what airline you were going to fly and price was not the only deciding factor, which airline would you choose? The airline with the big "roo" on the tail, a "Virgin" in the market, two major US carriers and Air New Zealand?

Now that you more familiar with the "Bare Essentials" of Air New Zealand, if you did a little more digging, you'd find that they have the best seating product of any airline flying to Auckland and one that is certainly competitive with Qantas A380 (in Economy Class). Add fun to the mix and the fact that on Air New Zealand, what you see is what you get, if you were to say Air New Zealand, then the advertising has been successful.

This is just one man's opinion, but I suspect that it's going to be wildly successful. Oh, and by the way, Air New Zealand is just as good as they say they are-if not a little bit better.

Here are two "fun" features for you:

The first is a short film on how the advertising campaign came about and what went into the making of the adverts. The second is a blooper reel...if you don't think these folks had a blast getting buff(ed) for their performance, think again...






Kia ora...and thanks Air New Zealand!!


Films Courtesy Air New Zealand, YouTube and AirNZNothing2Hide.