INSPIRING SPIRIT

Silver Spike

Case Film

Presentation Board

TitleINSPIRING SPIRIT
BrandSCOOT
Product / ServiceAIRLINE
CategoryA04. Crisis Communications & Issue Management
EntrantSAATCHI & SAATCHI Singapore, SINGAPORE
Entrant Company SAATCHI & SAATCHI Singapore, SINGAPORE
Advertising Agency SAATCHI & SAATCHI Singapore, SINGAPORE
PR Agency SWEENEYVESTY Singapore, SINGAPORE
Production Company CALIBRE PICTURES Singapore, SINGAPORE
Production Company 2 MOVIOLA Singapore, SINGAPORE
Production Company 3 EMOXIS Singapore, SINGAPORE

Credits

Name Company Position
Dominic Stallard Saatchi & Saatchi Executive Creative Director
Chris Soh Saatchi & Saatchi Art Director
Stephanie Gwee Saatchi & Saatchi Art Director
Chris Soh Saatchi & Saatchi Copywriter
Stephanie Gwee Saatchi & Saatchi Copywriter
Dominic Stallard Saatchi & Saatchi Art Director
Steve Walls Saatchi & Saatchi Head of Planning
Esther Yue Saatchi & Saatchi Chief Operations Officer
Celevel Butler Saatchi & Saatchi Managing Director
Andrea Cid Saatchi & Saatchi Copywriter
Jennie Morris Saatchi & Saatchi Copywriter
Ben Wight Saatchi & Saatchi Copywriter
Stella Pok Saatchi & Saatchi Account Director
Terry Ong Saatchi & Saatchi Project Manager
Tom Judd SweeneyVesty Account Director
Sarah Tan SweeneyVesty Senior Consultant
Kelvin Koo Publicis Singapore Head of Digital
Jess Seow Publicis Singapore Account Director
Goh Siying Publicis Singapore Account Manager
Vanessa Tan Publicis Singapore Lead Community Manager

The Campaign

Low cost Asian airline Scoot discovered that their branding had seemingly been copied by a North American airline – Spirit Airlines. Instead of suing (as it's not in line with Scoot's cheeky and playful brand personality), we decided to have some fun with Scoot's doppelganger, while gaining brand awareness. We informed Spirit (particularly their CEO) that if they want to duplicate Scoot's brand, they should at least do it well. So we launched a video calling them out. We followed up with a direct mail kit – with content that provided guidelines for Spirit to properly create Scoot's brand personality. This included a step-by-step guide on how to easily create Scoot ads, as well as Scoot's full Corporate Identity guidelines. We also included a kit to make their very own Marketer of the Year trophy – a replica of the one Scoot won in 2014. As the campaign gained momentum, we flew a giant blimp over their headquarters in Florida. And, as our biggest sign of commitment, we named a new Boeing 787 Dreamliner after them. The plane "Inspiring Spirit" is in operation today. At all junctures of this campaign, we leveraged on PR to achieve our goals of engaging with Spirit in a light-hearted manner, while achieving brand awareness. We pitched stories to various media outlets globally at every point of the campaign – from the initial launch of the web video, to the delivery of the kits, and the naming of the plane.

The Brief

The objective was to generate widespread conversation about Scoot, especially with our existing and prospective passengers. We knew that if the content was interesting enough, the online community and media would share it for us, so we focussed on generating more hype at each stage - leading up to the naming of the plane.

Results

As the objective was to generate as much awareness as possible, we managed to get over 100 media outlets to cover the campaign globally. To date, the campaign has generated 41 million US dollars of earned media. A substantial part of this was from extensive coverage on CNN, Bloomberg, Channel News Asia and USA Today. The number of people Googling out our brand over the campaign period increased by a significant 32%. The first video in the campaign received 57,495 views on Scoot's Facebook site, 1,373 Likes and 319 Shares within 12 hours, with 95% of the responses being positive. We even got Spirit employees rallying for Scoot online.

Execution

The campaign launched with a video posted on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, that featured Scoot’s CEO addressing Spirit Airlines in a tongue-in-cheek manner. In the video, we informed Spirit (particularly their CEO) that if they want to duplicate our work, they should at least do it well. We followed up with a direct mail kit on 10 April – with content that provided guidelines for Spirit to properly create our ads. This included a step-by-step guide on how to create Scoot ads, and Scoot's Corporate Identity guidelines. We also included a kit to make their very own Marketer of the Year trophy – a replica of the one Scoot won in 2014. We flew a blimp over their headquarters on 16 April. And named a new Boeing 787 Dreamliner in their honour on 23 April. The campaign lasted for 2 weeks, and ran according to the original plan.

The Situation

Scoot discovered that another budget airline had adopted very similar branding and advertising as theirs – from the font, the colours, to the tone and voice of the ads, and even the illustrations used in Scoot ads. The similarities were very apparent. But instead of suing Spirit Airlines - as this was not in line with our fun, irreverent brand personality - we decided to launch a campaign to have some fun with Spirit, while leveraging on social media and PR to achieve brand awareness.

The Strategy

There were three main target audiences for the campaign: - Primarily it was to 'fire a warning shot' at Spirit Airlines' CEO Ben Baldanza, and his marketing team. - We wanted to engage the online community - especially existing and potential Scoot customers across Asia. - All the elements in the campaign were sent to media outlets for PR coverage, generating global publicity for the brand.