People fly for fun and adventure? Wrong! Understanding rather than assuming customers’ needs can create game changing marketing campaigns!
Virgin Atlantic
SERVICES: Strategy
IMPACT AREA: Brand & Product strategy
TOOLS: Interviews
The Challenge
The airline industry was getting aggressively competitive on ticket prices. The client wanted to rebrand its economy tickets into three new price tiers - all of which were more expensive than their main competitor brands. It was struggling how to align these new ticket prices/structure with a clear and believable consumer message that also underlined the key values of the brand.
It also wanted to differentiate itself in a crowded market by speaking to the real needs of customers - and not those that the industry had assumed and positioned itself against over the past decade.
Our approach
-
We needed to ascertain (with proof) what consumers actually needed when considering booking, paying for and taking a flight. We also needed to verify if what they were feeding back was simply what they were being influenced by in terms of a generic airline marketing approach relating to flying to have ‘fun and adventure’. Was this actually why people fly? We then needed to test reaction and understanding of the new ticket prices and understand how we could position these changes to reflect the key values of the brand.
The investigation phase consisted of 3 levels:
We conducted In-Depth Psychological Interviews with business and holiday fliers to understand more about their needs (conscious and non conscious), behavioural drivers and cognitive barriers regarding travel and flying.
We then tested these emergent themes via our EMOTIX non conscious impact assessment tool - and from this had statistically supported evidence for what was important and unimportant for the communication of flying and travelling.
We designed psychological perception, reaction and memory tests to assess how to best position the new pricing tiers and descriptions - so that the target audience engaged, understood and remembered the ticket structures easily.
-
People do not fly to be excited or to have fun. That starts to happen when they arrive and get off the plane.
What people need from flying is no stress, little hassle and swift resolution to any anxieties they experience - and these needs apply from travelling to the airport, in the airport, on the plane and debarkation at the destination.
We found if travellers were reassured that their problems/anxieties would be attended to by the airline staff (at the airports and on the plane) they are quite price tolerant and in fact do not look for the cheapest tickets - but engage with the brands they feel will best protect them against potential stress.
We discovered that flyers associated the client brand to have the most ground crew visible at airports and on the planes themselves.
-
As we discovered that people fly just to get somewhere and want that journey to be as stress free as possible AND that they emotionally seek brands they think will manage that potential stressful trip - we developed a strategic brand message that explained the price increases. We created a campaign that linked that we knew flying was stressful, that the brand had more crew available to resolve any potential problems quickly (than the other airlines) and that consumers wouldn’t mind paying a little more to have that peace of mind.
The client reported this was the most successful campaign they’ve ever undertaken.
“This was one of the most successful marketing and ticket price change campaigns that we have ever undertaken. Consumers understood the new pricing structures clearly (from the psychological assessment testing Innovationbubble undertook) and the key campaign message not only differentiated us from the pack but spoke to the real needs of the market. The whole process ran much more smoothly and with less consumer resistance/churn than we had initially anticipated. The ability to reveal the non conscious drivers of consumer concern was a real game change"
— Vice President, Marketing, Virgin Atlantic