The Brief

Air New Zealand was struggling to get Japanese to visit New Zealand, especially to young audience. Also having a task to strengthen the online airline ticket sales, targeting young people was essential. This campaign “’Leave It to Us’ Request System” linked the target, directly to Air New Zealand, concerning the habit and the culture of Japan and Japanese. Utilizing their “daily” tool and touch points, we focused on direct one on one communication; boss and the employee, Air New Zealand and each audience, which will eventually expand inside SNS. Also lead to e-commerce site where you can directly buy your tickets to New Zealand online.

Creative Execution

Our target audience was Japanese business people, who have wills to purchase airline ticket, online. Famous for hard-working, they hardly take a vacation, worst acquisition rate for 6 years to 2013. (Vacation Deprivation® study by Expedia) The leave request form is the first problem. Then you need to humbly persuade your boss at work, very difficult for shy Japanese. To truly grab the heart of the audience, Air New Zealand focused on solving the problem that Japanese have, “to take a vacation.” Here, we not only focused on the employee but changing bosses conventional perception was also important.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

Air New Zealand was struggling to get Japanese to visit New Zealand. Low name recognition was one of the problems. Hence, one on one communication was important to increase affinity with the brand. However, concerning the research undertaken, (ADK Original Research on Travel 2013) the country New Zealand itself had low in recognition, as well as the airline. Our objective was to raise awareness and understanding of Air New Zealand, also increasing the sales of airline tickets.

Results

"Leave It to Us Request System," a simple and innovative request system that creates a leave application form customized to generate the most effective and positive response, was made. In the microsite, the audience will choose their boss amongst their Facebook friends. Then simply check the date, where in New Zealand they want to go, and most importantly, match them to their boss’s personality. From more than 2000 patterns, the system automatically generates and creates the most persuasive content just for their boss, with the essence of Air New Zealand. Once submitted via Facebook messenger, the application was then automatically shared with friends and colleagues increasing the persuasion and creating even more leave applications. The campaign implementation was one month in September, considering the best vacation season in New Zealand. This unique system appealed especially to shy young Japanese business-persons, long given up the hope of taking a vacation.