2011 Gold Best use of new technology

01 Dec 2011

Client British Airways

What is wonderful about this work? To promote BA's Caribbean flights, passers-by and Facebookers could contact the Caribbean and see an immediate response on our digital poster in London. We saw more than a text a minute, with a dwell time of up to 15 minutes. Caribbean bookings went up 8.6%, with St. Lucia's revenue up 21% and our featured hotel's revenue up 308%.

What details of the strategy make this a winning entry? British Airways is the UK's market-leading airline. They're big. Safe. To promote a destination they typically use retail-pricing campaigns; billboards showing a retouched holiday picture with a big price message. We were tasked with promoting their flights and holidays to the Caribbean using a digital billboard at Westfield Shopping Centre. Few passers-by, with the expense of Christmas out of the way, were thinking of a Caribbean holiday. To our advantage this billboard had a high footfall and many of the shoppers were the target audience. But without a disruption, people would walk by this very conventional medium. We used technology to make it as interactive, real time and social as other media, showing a more fun and human side of British Airways. So we brought real-time Caribbean sunshine to one of the coldest-ever UK winters, through a poster to the other side of the world.

How did creativity bring the strategy to life? Over a weekend, the poster broadcast two holidaymakers live from a secret Caribbean island, who encouraged shoppers to text in their questions, guess their secret location and win a holiday there. The holidaymakers could respond in real time to what was happening in London, catch the attention of shoppers and pull in the crowds. The curious public could text questions and see the holidaymaker's reply on the digital billboard. Then they could text their competition entry guess. Real-time answers were delivered onscreen by text, as relevant video clues, or live action. In terms of technology, we built our own messaging system, boosted bandwidth so there was no time lag between continents, and built our own back-end to put streaming on Facebook and a CMS system.

Results In 14 live broadcast hours, there was more than one guess every minute. Competition texters' dwell time was 15 minutes. The average time watching the billboards was 45 seconds (industry average is one to two seconds). Our Caribbean bookings went up by 8.6% while St. Lucia bookings increased 39%. St. Lucia flight revenue was up 21% and revenue for the hotel seen onscreen was 308%.

Judge's comment:"There's a real novelty factor here but it isn't just clever for its own sake. It stopped consumers in their tracks and got them talking to the brand and to each other. This was a small-scale test for BA and the results prove it would definitely be worthy of rollout." Caroline Parkes, LIDA

Team Dick Dunford - Creative Director, Jim Thomas - Copywriter, Jaime Nunez - Art Director, Kris Adams - Art Director, Liz Baines - Planner, Topher Jones - Account Manager, Bassam Abdel Rahmen - Account Director, Alan Lead - Senior Interface Designer, Ben Loach - Senior Designer, Matt Smart - Senior 3-D Designer

Other contributors Connected Pictures - production and broadcast

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2011 Gold Best use of new technology

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