2011 Silver Best creative solution or innovation

Client British Airways

What is wonderful about this work? To promote BA's Caribbean flights, we let passers-by text 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 decided to use mobiles to start a conversation in real time with the Caribbean, 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. Everyone, with even the cheapest handset and a £10 SIM, could join in there and then. In addition, to hold the audience's attention, the digital billboard could also play pre-recorded films as answers to questions. Facebookers could also follow the live action and respond online.

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%.

Team Dick Dunford, Jim Thomas, Jaime Nunez, Kris Adams, Liz Baines, Topher Jones, Bassam Abdel Rahmen, Alan Lead, Ben Loach, Matt Smart.

Other contributor Connected Pictures – production and broadcast.