Melbourne Herald Sun, Thursday April 18, 2013
It's a long jump - an expensive one - between Perth and New Zealand. So how do you sell more airline tickets? There was a very clever PR event put on last weekend with that purpose in mind. The mechanism was to gather a mass of expatriate Kiwis and drive them tearfully homesick.
Air New Zealand used a Facebook page and online media for much of the promotion, so in advertising budget terms it would have been very low cost. It's a great example of how clever PR and social media can produce spectacular results.
The 700 lonely Kiwis who responded were given a movie show at a rooftop cinema (Kiwi films only of course). Visitors received dinner, with the best New Zealand wines, cider and beers. The flight crew brought over the Tasman their favourite sweets, cheeses, chips - even a jar of boiled eggs to remind everyone of the sweet smell of Rotorua.
They also found a homesick young man whose birthday was due on the day, and with the connivance of his friends arranged to fly his mum and dad over. The whole reunion was filmed and shown on the movie night, to many a damp eye.
Homesickness is a very human condition - as was demonstrated by Chinese Hainan Airline Group earlier this year. As anyone who's visited China during its New Year knows, it feels like every individual in this massive country is going home somewhere else. The sad ones are those who can't afford the trip, and these are the ones who were courted by the airline.
A hundred young people, mostly students studying overseas or in distant provinces, were selected by the Send Love Home program and each given a return flight to their waiting family.
A typical reaction came from Peng Sijie, a violin student in the north German city of Rostock. "I made it home before Spring Festival," he said with delight on arriving in Beijing.
"Thanks HNA for helping me come home!" No doubt Dad ordered another crate of rockets and bangers (China is a very noisy place to be at new year).
Handled skilfully, programs like these can create a wide-rippling effect of goodwill. You can be sure that the grapevines of West Australia's Kiwis and China's myriad overseas students are humming with the stories and a heap of kudos for Air New Zealand and HNA.
Then there are some promotions so cool you need to carry a bucket of ice water. Since 2008 Bacardi Limited has run a world-wide PR campaign called "Champions Drink Responsibly". It is a smart way to keep themselves out of the line of fire of advancing regulators - who we talk of frequently on these pages - and also the right thing to do. It trains young adults on how to party responsibly, not be stupid, and not drive drunk.
Well this year their Champion is Spanish tennis heart-throb Rafael Nadal. According to the promotion, he is putting on a great party in July at a luxury villa on his home island of Mallorca, Spain - called the Castell de Manresa.
All the top models and euro playboys will be there, DJs, speaker towers and a music mix selected by Rafa himself. Food and entertainment will be great and plentiful, accompanied by responsible drinking under the watchful eye of the champion himself.
Hey sounds like my kind of party - or it used to be. Only problem is that today is the last day to enter, April 18, so if you want in you'd better get to the Champions Drink Responsibly Facebook page pretty quick. I've put my entry in already.
ray@ebeatty.com
Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com
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