Why is this work relevant for Creative Strategy?

Post lockdown of air travel in India, everyone feared flying including our staff. We needed a creative strategy that reflected the essence of our organisation as well as the mindset of travellers to ease these fears and make flying hassle-free in a clutter breaking format. So, we re-branded our airline as "Lean, Clean Flying Machine" to create a unifying and integrated creative platform that could be executed across all consumer touch points. Key task was to ensure that we tackled this serious topic in our brand tone of being childlike and quirky, to be able to create a distinct narrative.

Background

In March 2020, the entire travel industry in India came to a halt and the airlines took the worst hit. When the lockdown ended, it was important to bring back the confidence in flying again in tough revenue situations and limited budgets. We needed to reassure the public that every safety precaution possible had been taken to ensure a safe journey. Additionally, there was a need to alleviate passenger anxiety at every step of the way and create an experience that made our consumers feel safe. We also needed a rallying cry for our employees internally. The key objective was to create a customer experience platform to engage passengers and reassure them that we have got them covered at every step of their journey. We also needed to position us as the most trusted airline in the country to capture the market share.

The Interpretation of the Challenge (30% of vote)

Post lockdown, all fliers cared about was hygiene and cleanliness and there was a strong negative sentiment around travel and flying. It was upon us to build confidence in the minds of customers and trade partners, that it’s safe to fly again. Brand task: - Stimulate demand for air travel through consistent messaging to customers. - Deliver the message of cleanliness and hygiene to fliers. - Ensure that we do this in the brand voice, but with care and sensitivity in the context of COVID-19. The target audience were all our stakeholders - customers, trade partners, Govt. agencies and even our employees. As the market leader, it was imperative to make flying safe for the whole country.

The Insight / Breakthrough Thinking (30% of vote)

The strategic approach was to think of a clutter breaking unified communication strategy to stand out from and build trust in customers. Our on-time record and hassle-free service meant we had a reputation for being trustworthy and efficient. During COVID-19, these qualities were the greatest assets any brand could own. We leveraged this with a message that was inspiring, relevant, and true to us - The Lean, Clean Flying Machine. Key challenges for us were multi-fold with lack of resources, sad state of industry affairs, lack of trust in the airline industry due to massive cancelations. The team ensured we tackled this smartly through re-branding the airline in a way that it not only appealed to the customers but our internal staff as well. The campaign really kicked off when our CEO referred to himself as Lean, Clean Flying Ambassador and sent across a public communication to all customers.

The Creative Idea (20% of vote)

The creative strategy was developed keeping in mind our brand tonality, which would be reassuring and simple to understand in the challenging times. This was executed across all touch points of the consumer journey and communicated about safety and sanitation measures. o Consumer Experience ▪ Airport - Ramps, flags, announcements ▪ Aircraft - Seat headrest covers, announcements, lavatory branding, food packaging. ▪ Boarding - Special Safety kits for passengers o Online ▪ Website & app ▪ Digital Assets – WhatsApp messaging, SMS, emails, digital inflight magazine ▪ Social media ▪ ORM Integration o Offline ▪ Print Media ▪ OOH o Public Relations ▪ Press releases; CEO & CCO interviews with television, print and online media. o Internal ▪ Communication from Senior leadership through virtual town halls and email ▪ Training session for frontline staff with the philosophy ▪ Social media “giphy” and other engagement ideas ▪ Email Signatures

The Outcome / Results (20% of vote)

● Business Impact: o Significant increase in our market share from 48% in pre-covid times to ~ 54% now, as per the DGCA report (Dec 2020) despite limited marketing investments. o 16-point increase in customer confidence in IndiGo’s ability to take care of customers health and safety (81% in Dec 2020 vs 65% in May 2020). o Significant improvement in our NPS score from 41 to 54 during this period. ● Campaign Reach: o Overall reach of ~14,098,425 and ~23,367,162 impressions on social media. o The campaign hashtag #LeanCleanFlyingMachine got over 100 million impressions on social media. o Reached over 15 million people through influencer activations. ● Brand Love –: o 97% of the conversations on this have been positive/neutral. Such testimonials were showcased on social media. o Internally, our staff rallied under the campaign banner and provided the highest order of customer service despite the new protocols.