With customer complaints about cramped seating and new fees for checked bags being added to the standard grievances around horrible food and rude flight attendants, airlines could use some good press these days.
In Canada, WestJet has already created considerable customer goodwill with its hugely successful Christmas Miracle videos; now, Air Canada is trying to shed its impersonal image with a new content marketing initiative developed by Montreal agency Marketel.
“A Boy and 3 Gifts” is intended to create awareness of the little-known Air Canada Foundation, which was established in 2012 with a mandate to ensure the health and wellness of children and youth through partners including the Breakfast Club of Canada and the Children’s Miracle Network.
“We thought the foundation was an underleveraged part of their business,” Marketel creative director Jo-Ann Munro said of the initiative. “We thought it was an interesting part of their brand story that people should know about.”
The six-and-a-half minute video follows Trent Leon, a shy 11-year-old boy from the First Nations community of Anahim Lake (pop. 1,500) in Northern B.C., as he travels to Montreal to spend time with the Montreal Canadiens’ all-star goaltender – and Anahim Lake native – Carey Price.
Price and his wife Angela are new ambassadors for the Breakfast Club of Canada, volunteering, attending events and promoting work done on the club’s behalf.
Shot in mid-January, the video chronicles Trent as he is appointed ambassador for the community’s Breakfast Club of Canada chapter and travels to Montreal – via Air Canada business class – to meet with Price at the Canadiens’ practice facility.
It concludes with the young boy presenting Price with a series of letters written by his classmates, thanking the NHL star for his contribution to the Breakfast Club of Canada.
The video is housed on Air Canada’s YouTube channel, where it has garnered more than 370,000 views since its March 20 debut. It is also appearing as part of Air Canada’s in-flight entertainment, and is being promoted via the airline’s various social media channels.
“Hopefully it makes [consumers] feel good about the brand,” said Munro. “It’s the hidden things it’s doing that it hasn’t been talking about.”
Munro said the video evolved organically as word of planned surprises for Trent spread quickly throughout the small, tight-knit community. “We were trying to set up a little surprise for [Trent] and then found out it was no longer going to be a surprise,” she said. “We had an idea of what we were doing, but there were many curveballs along the way.”
Marketel worked with Air Canada for more than 20 years before the airline awarded its creative account to JWT in September 2013. However, the Montreal agency retained the content marketing aspect of its business, which Munro said has become a key area of focus for the agency – with recent work for clients including L’Oréal Paris and the Quebec development capital organization, Fonds de solidarité FTQ.
“Not all clients are asking for it, but it’s something we are offering more and more,” said Munro. “More and more [clients are saying] ‘We have this neat idea that we can do as content and feed through our social media channels.’
“They don’t have a ton of money, but they have unpaid media channels and they can still get some traction if they have enough followers. They’re already starting with a fair amount of eyeballs.”
The agency is already working on a follow-up content piece for Air Canada, though Munro was tight-lipped about details.
