Engaging a Younger Audience | Aer Lingus & RTÉ
Client: Aer Lingus
Agency: Dentsu Aegis
Project: Jen's Weekend: London
Primary Platform: RTÉ Player
Objective
The goal of this campaign was to connect with a younger audience, particularly 18-24s, and inspire them to travel to London.
This goal was broken out into four distinct objectives:
- To increase engagement with the target demographic on social channels.
- To reinforce Aer Lingus' unique personality and 'Smart Flies' positioning.
- Motivate consumers to plan and book with Aer Lingus.
- Achieve targets for sales to Heathrow, Gatwick and London City.
What was the opportunity?
As London is a familiar destination to a lot of young people, we wanted to show a different side to London to inspire travel among the Aer Lingus target demographic. RTÉ Player original content performs particularly well among this audience. In partnership with Storylab, RTÉ Media Sales created bespoke, engaging content that would highlight the hidden gems that London has to offer.
Jennifer Zamparelli was chosen as the presenter of this RTÉ Player original series. Jennifer was the perfect person to connect with the audience Aer Lingus were aiming for. The premise was for Jennifer to take an alternative view of London with celebrities that would appeal to the target audience. These celebrities included Stephanie Pratt (The Hills, Made in Chelsea), Joel Dommett (8 Out of 10 Cats), Eyal Booker (Love Island), Georgia 'Toff' Toffolo (Made in Chelsea), Tom Read Wilson (Celeb's Go Dating) and Vanessa White (The Saturdays). This mix of celebrities gave the show a wide appeal.
Why RTÉ?
Aer Lingus knew that with RTÉ their brand was guaranteed a high quality production. RTÉ has the same high editorial standards across all its platforms.
What was really interesting about this campaign was RTÉ approached us with a unique bundle of support for the content. Not only did we get really high quality bespoke content for the [RTÉ] Player, that was supported through promotions through the [RTÉ] Player, through Radio and through the website.
Another element of the package that appealed to Aer Lingus was the cross-media aspect. Jen's Weekend: London had promotion across Radio, through Jennifer's breakfast show on RTÉ 2FM (Breakfast Republic), Online, through native articles on RTÉ.ie and RTÉ News Now, and social promotion through RTÉ's unique reach on social platforms. One launch RTÉ carried a home page takeover on RTÉ.ie.
What was the result?
There were 649,000 social views with 268,639 social engagements. The homepage takeover saw 2.7 million impressions throughout the campaign. The native content on RTÉ.ie had 68,000 content views*.
Under-35s who saw the content were more favourable towards Aer Lingus than those who did not**. Two thirds of the target audience found the content really engaging, and over half said that the content inspired them to travel to London. Prompted awareness that Aer Lingus flies into London City Airport rose from 20% to 25% following the campaign.
There was a 120% uplift in searches for London year-on-year and an increase of 333%*** in bookings.
