The Brief

During Hong Kong’s monsoon season, there are barely 100 hours of sunshine. The constant, heavy precipitation makes the desire for sun even stronger. Cebu Pacific wanted to take advantage of the rain and attract a new target, Hong Kong leisure travellers, to the sunny Philippines and grow sales through their online booking site and increase consideration as a flight option. Aiming to change their main focus from overseas Filipino workers living in nearby countries, how could a low-cost airline with a small marketing allocation attract Hong Kong leisure travellers to take their flights to a sunny paradise?

Creative Execution

Cebu Pacific is a budget carrier with a small marketing budget. This was a highly cost-effective solution as we used a free resource to craft a message that had a powerful and surprising effect on people - the uncontrollable weather. As an airline that has only quite recently started flights around the region, the client was willing and excited to consider innovative and creative ways to promote the brand in Hong Kong as not just an airline for travelling domestically but also to take passengers around the region.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

Using the innovative “NeverWet™” liquid repellant spray, we left invisible advertisements in the busiest spots across Hong Kong. It is only until the stormy skies arrived, the rainwater revealed the advertisements with an embedded QR-code. People were surprised with this unique experience seeing how rain brought the advertisement to life next to where they were standing. Using their mobile phones, passerby’s scanned the QR-code which led them to a mobile booking engine that offered them special offer on flight tickets to a sunny destination in Philippines. Once the rain stopped, the offer dried up too…

Results

The campaign didn’t need to rely on heavy online media investment to drive traffic to their digital platform but instead it used a surprising and unconventional method. The communication achieved its goals and in just the first month of storms, sales though the online booking site grew 37% month-on-month. By leveraging on a negative meteorological aspect about Hong Kong, Cebu Pacific has lived up to it’s brand positioning of “Why Everyone Flies” and has given travelers another reason to fly in the most innovative manner.