7 marketing lessons from KLM’s space
flight campaign
KLM is known for being innovative
when deciding to launch a new campaign. With KLM Surprise Campaign, launched two years ago, KLM perfectly took
advantage of the social media and the e-word-of-mouth to enhance the brand
image, engage customers, and gain new customers. Indeed, the Surprise Campaign consisted in looking
at KLM travelers’ social media updates regarding their trip and offering to 28
passengers personalized gifts at the airport. As a result, the campaign leaded
to a million impressions on Twitter in only three weeks.
Here, once
again, KLM tries to hit hard with its new campaign called “Claim your place at
space”. The campaign takes the form of a
contest where the participant has to guesstimate the maximum height of a special
high altitude balloon launched by the Dutch airline company on the 22nd
of April 2013 from Nevada desert. Once the outer atmosphere is reached, the
balloon is expected to pop. To measure the height at which the balloon pops, a
GPS and camera system will be carried on the balloon that will track it.
The contest
is exclusively available online so on the D-day everyone can monitor the
balloon position online. To participate, users have to log on http://space.klm.com/ and determine
the exact position by marking the height but also the position of the balloon
on a horizontal grid. The participant that finds the
closest position where the balloon pops will be declared winner. He will have
the privilege to get a flight for two to Curacao with a stay in a luxury hotel
and a space flight for one aboard the SXC Lynx spaceship.
What are the
key factors that make this campaign a hit in terms of innovation and probably a
success by reaching new clients and increasing brand awareness? 7 marketing
lessons can be given.
Firstly,
the campaign grabs the attention because it is offering something that we are
numerous to dream about and that represents quite a unique experience: going
into space. Secondly, KLM makes participants involve by proposing them to
choose a specific place in the space as their own. If the balloon pops in their
area the flight space ticket belongs to them. The third lesson can be
summarized by the fact that the platform where the contest is hold is well
designed making once again the participant engaged by some animations like
cutting the rope that retains the balloon. Then, this campaign allows KLM to
collect information about participants as they have to register online to guesstimate
(name, e-mail, and location); they also have the possibility to receive the
company’s newsletter. In addition, KLM prevents from robot scripts cheating,
and so avoids any complaints from participants, by “placing a captcha page
before confirming the entry ensuring only humans participate in the contest”.
Moreover, the Dutch organization supports its campaign using a strong viral
marketing. Every time the user manages to make a social media “friend” join the
contest, his/her place in space increases and so his/her chances to win it.
Thus, participants are implicitly encouraged to spread the word about the space
flight contest. Finally, mobile technology becoming a key channel for the
travel and tourism industry, the contest is available on tablets and mobile
phones.
All
in all, KLM seems to gather all the necessary ingredients to make this campaign
a full success. In this way, it will be interesting for tourism and travel
companies to follow this example. Indeed, any organisation should try to be
innovative when launching a campaign to reach a broader range of customers and
increase brand awareness. Besides, they should follow the seventh lessons
described above to get an efficient communication campaign as KLM is doing for
a couple of years now.
Key words: airline, innovative communication campaign, e-marketing,
social media, space tourism
More information can be found at:
Picture source: guardian.co.uk
Contributed by Estelle Bidon and Audrey Tatard
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