Air Transat has moved its creative and media business to DentsuBos without a review.
For the past three years, Cossette has managed both media and creative for consumer-facing advertising, while DentsuBos worked on corporate branding and communications. Moving forward DentsuBos will act as the brand’s agency of record and lead all of its creative campaigns.
Cossette is still in the agency mix and will continue to handle customer relationship management program for the Montreal-based travel brand, according to Geneviève LeBrun, senior marketing director at Air Transat.
LeBrun said Air Transat had conversations with the agencies about how their relationship could evolve and selected DentsuBos to start working on a new brand campaign this summer.
“There’s a strong relationship with DentsuBos,” she said. “They’ve delivered in a very compelling manner in the past and, more importantly, the new campaign is going to be a good demonstration of what we can do together.”
LeBrun added that iProspect, DentsuBos’ performance marketing arm, and the agency’s larger Dentsu Aegis network contributed to the brand’s decision to selection. iProspect will now work on a number of digital initiatives for Air Transat, including search marketing.
Both creative and media will be handled by DentsuBos’ Montreal office. In an interview with Marketing, DentsuBos vice-president and creative director Sébastien Rivest said he’s eager to apply what the agency has learned about the Air Transat brand to its mass campaigns.
“We’re proud to partner with this local company and to help them achieve their goals,” Rivest said. “Traveling is a great creative playground.”
New campaign takes flight
Launched Monday, DentsuBos’ first campaign as creative AOR supports Air Transat’s turnkey vacation offering, Transat Holidays.
The campaign is called #ExperienceTransat and uses user-generated content to showcase the company’s destination vacation packages. This summer DentsuBos and Air Transat flew to the Dominican Republic and Mexico to find real customers to feature in the ads.
In a further attempt to showcase real stories from real people, Air Transat also created a website where customers can upload photos and stories about their Transat Holidays vacations. LeBrun said the brand chose to use real customers rather than paid actors because it believes consumers are influenced by their peers.
“They have a credible voice and they bring a level of authenticity that resonates in today’s world. There’s a lot of passion about trips and vacations down south – or any type of vacation – and we felt [that created] a very credible voice,” said LeBrun.
According to Rivest, the casting took place entirely on-site at the destinations. First and foremost, he said, they were looking for customers who were enjoying their vacations and were “willing to share their happiness, the thrill of their vacation.”
All the materials are based on the insight that consumers like to share photos and videos of their vacations, resulting in jealousy from their friends and family back home. For example, ads that ran in the Toronto Star over the weekend showed photos of Air Transat customers doing vacation activities, like zip-lining and hanging out on the beach, alongside a message for those back home – a kind of envy-fueled play on the classic Wish You Were Here postcard.
The campaign includes three 30-second national television spots, as well as ads in daily newspapers in major markets across Canada, pre-roll on YouTube, display ads, search and radio spots.
On social media, Air Transat is focusing on organic reach (the brand has close to 400,000 Facebook fans).
