After having its marketing budget crushed by the pandemic, Flight Centre quickly rejigged its marketing priorities to stay connected with customers while planes were grounded.
Speaking at AdNews’ Brisbane Live event, Flight Centre global brand manager Darren Wright explained how the brand managed to survive travel restrictions put in place during the pandemic.
According to Wright, the pandemic cut the brand’s global marketing budget from about $260 million to $8 million and reduced its team size.
However, this didn’t stop Flight Centre from releasing its first global campaign, created in-house, in April.
“We had a marketing budget circa $260 million, globally, and 260 staff [before the pandemic] and we were down to $8 million in spend and 65 staff [after the pandemic],” Wright said.
“So everything went to the bottom of the funnel, and we really went to the war chest to build out a brand campaign.
“The campaign launched in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and then we’ll launch it in the UK, and Canada once they start to move. Our budget was circa $2 million, so we used all our own assets, all through our socials and skimming media wherever we can.
“We’re doing most of our creative in-house. We pitched out the campaign to a few agencies and CHE Proximity had won the pitch, we grabbed one of their ideas and paid them for it and said 'thank you very much' and did it in-house.”
However, Wright doesn't see the brand in-housing all its creative, saying that a business needs external players to look at it critically.
He also adds that while travel has picked up, particularly with the New Zealand travel bubble, the brand has shifted away from performance to branding with a big focus on trust, which the brand used its global campaign to do.
"We didn't have a lot of money so we thought, how do we come to market? What do we do to build trust with our customers again, and to also target new customers,” he said.
“Pre-COVID, people went looking for a cheap deal online, and would try to find some accommodation through Airbnb. But I think now in the new normal people are looking for a bit of trust, support, knowledge and experience that helps them navigate what can be quite difficult.
“So the brand campaign that we released is really about building that trust and instilling a bit more fun in the Flight Centre brand. We did a whole bunch of research before COVID hit that found we were a little old, a little daggy, shouty and our captain was a little bit boring. So we sacked him. We just launched with the new captain and put a new positioning line in which is ‘Experience our Experience’.
“We've built a new TV campaign with stories that relate to the current customer journey. So we’re trying to build out a message that the brand is here to instill trust.”
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.