An airport has been considered a place where you stay as little as possible before visiting somewhere special. We used to say true memories are made from the moment when we get out of the airport.
“What if we create good memories for passengers, which can only be experienced inside the airport?”
The commercial campaigns, which brought new sensations to passengers following their regular routine in the airport, began with this question. This post introduces campaigns held by the London Heathrow Airport, the Canadian West Jet, and the Incheon Airport! 😊
London Heathrow Airport, “Coming Home for Christmas”
Heathrow Airport is an airport near London, representing the UK. It is the largest airport in the UK, the most crowded in Europe, and the third-most crowded airport in the world.
During the winter of 2016, Heathrow Airport drew a lot of attention when it first revealed the commercial “Coming Home for Christmas,” featuring the travel of an elderly teddy bear couple.
The camera follows the teddy bear couple, who picks up their baggage and finds an exit, with warmth in their heart. The couple, arriving at the exit, looks for someone among the crowd waiting for their loved ones. Then, two kids run into the arms of the couple, and the commercial ends with teddy bears switched to humans and hugging their grandkids.
This commercial delivers the warm message that “the best gift of all” is being together with your family, which caught the attention of the world. Most of the people wants to spend a warm end-of-the-year with their beloved ones. Many people seemed to empathize with Heathrow Airport’s campaign.
West Jet, “Real-time Giving”
West Jet is an airline headquartered in Calgary, Canada. It is the second largest airline in Canada, following Air Canada.
West Jet unveiled a video titled “Christmas Miracle: Real-time Giving” during the winter of 2013. As its name suggests, it features the event of giving out gifts in real time.
At the event zone installed by West Jet within the airport premises, Santa appears on the screen, asking passengers the gifts they wanted to receive this Christmas. The video dynamically captures the process of how West Jet quickly noted down the list of gifts responded by the passengers until the gifts were delivered even before the passengers could arrive at their destination.
It was impressive to see people satisfied and happy with the gifts and especially a couple who mentioned a big screen TV. This was a campaign that delivered a message saying, “miracles do happen when we all work as one.”
Incheon Airport, “Experience the Wonders of Korea”
And of course, there is a campaign from Incheon Airport! As a smart airport, Incheon Airport provided a different level of fun with its VR-based commercial campaign, “Experience the Wonders of Korea,” showcased at the end of 2016.
This campaign answers the question on how to turn boredom of passengers waiting in the airport into “excitement” with a great idea of bringing the virtual world into reality. It was a surprise event where they set up a VR experience booth inside the airport, where the images the passengers saw in VR were transformed into reality right in front of their eyes. When they took their headset off after seeing various images of Korea in VR, they were surprised to see what they saw from VR unfolding before their eyes.
This campaign was designed to allow people to experience various traditions in Korea such as food, fashion, and martial arts and gained positive feedbacks from both Korean and international passengers. It must have helped foreign tourists who visited Korea for the first time to get more interested in Korea after experiencing such joy and excitement at Incheon Airport, right?
Incheon Airport had again prepared something special at the end of last year to allow passengers to begin a new year with more happiness—the “Hello to Your New Year” holiday campaign! It’s an event that when passengers say hello in front of the booths set up at two different places, they would receive gifts from Korean lucky bags. Click the link below to see more details about the campaign. 😊
So far, we have looked at the heartwarming commercial campaigns from airports across the world, by turning our expectations or giving out unexpected gifts! These campaigns seem to give us the message of how to make use of “expectations” of participants. While it is a shame that we cannot do more campaigns due to COVID-19, we hope to see new commercial campaigns at airports crowded with passengers, surprising passengers at the end of next year! 😊