2020 Bronze Travel and Leisure

Agency: Ogilvy UKand Wavemaker

Client: Level

Campaign Name: Fly with Pride with LEVEL: An authentic prosocial travel campaign for Barcelona Pride

Campaign Overview

Fly with Pride

New airline LEVEL wanted to offer an authentic travel campaign for Pride in Barcelona, its home city.

Strategy

As headline sponsor for Pride in Barcelona, the brief was to elevate LEVEL’s involvement to drive differentiation and deliver business impact through directly attributable flight bookings.

Insight showed Millennials prefer brands that stand for something. But rather than sticking a rainbow filter over their logo, the team wanted to demonstrate the airline's inclusive and modern approach to travel, while incorporating targeted messages about destination cities.

In short, most brands talk the talk; it was time for LEVEL to walk the walk.

Creativity

To generate awareness of brand values and drive flight bookings, an influencer selection framework that delivered maximum impact was created. Influencers required a majority following in Barcelona, and needed to create their own content for repurposing across LEVEL’s owned channels. They also had to be visibly and vocally supportive of the LGBTQI+ community.

Social media posts in the run-up to Pride communicated the airlines’s sponsorship as well as route destinations. Ads were targeted to people in Barcelona's surrounding regions who were likely to attend the event with interests in Gay Pride, Out, Ru Paul, Lesbian Pride, Pride and Homosexuality.

The integrated work combined social, influencers, OOH, print, a live stage at Pride and a parade bus, while a consistent social voice amplified the work to millions. These efforts coalesced into a single, streamlined promotion that elevated the brand, celebrated its values and drove bookings and revenue.

Hero activity saw the team devise LEVEL’s first IGTV video, showcasing the influencers in their chosen #DoThisNotThat locations. They helped viewers learn about what makes Barcelona so special to them, giving people an incentive to fly with a brand that encourages travellers to do the unexpected.

Each influencer supported and amplified the campaign with their own IG posts and stories at Pride. In addition, an OOH Metro station takeover at Plaza Espana made LEVEL the heart of the party giving brand visibility pre-Pride and capturing huge footfall.

Results

The Fly with Pride campaign exceeded KPIs across channels and delivered against strategic objectives: increase awareness of the brand and its new routes with a broad target audience in destination cities.

The #DoThisNotThat Pride guide to Barcelona gained more than 1 million organic reach and a staggering engagement rate of 20%, helping LEVEL to generate outstanding brand awareness and growth.

The Team

Ogilvy - James Baldwin, Influence Manager - Sophie Novak, Senior Account Manager

Wavemaker - Ian Bennett, Account Manager - Rory Davis, Client Director - Dane Neill, Associate Creative Director - Rahul Titus, Head of Influence - Gugs Sarna, Business Director