Visit Earth: S7 Airlines Creates Travel Show for Aliens
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S7 Airlines is hoping to increase brand awareness with a video series called “Visit Earth,” which encourages aliens to discover our planet. While the English version of the campaign launched last month, the Russian site received over 35 million visits over the past few months, according to W&K Amsterdam, the agency behind the campaign.
As with previous S7 campaigns such as the Best Planet and the Imagination Engine, ‘Visit Earth’ was created by W&K Amsterdam. W&K Amsterdam brought on Canadian director, Mackenzie Sheppard, winner of the Young Director’s Award Prize, at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, for the six episodes of Visit Earth. Meanwhile the series was narrated in Russian by Dmitry Syenduk, known to Russian TV viewers as the voice of the cartoon series “Rick & Monty.”
These six episodes cover nature, food, love, parties, sport and art. They are intended to give alien viewers a taste of the best things our planet has to offer, with the idea being that after watching the different episodes, our extraterrestrial friends will set off to see Earth for themselves.
Working with Mackenzie Sheppard, W&K travelled to Spain, Thailand, Italy, Japan and of course Russia (Sochi and St. Petersburg), to shoot the six episodes. As part of this they looked to unearth quirky stories like Italian cheese bowlers and Icelandic nudists to capture the imagination of aliens. This real-life travel footage was then merged with “commercial breaks” explaining basic Earth concepts such as gravity, air and food made of dough.
According to S7, the thinking behind the campaign harks back to much of the thinking behind the Best Planet and I Am You – namely that there are so many amazing things to discover, yet we’ve switched off and often forget they are here waiting to be seen, heard, felt and tasted.
Quoted on Russian news website Sostav, Eleonora Romanova, deputy general director for Marketing and PR, S7 Group said: “The mission of the S7 Airlines brand is to inspire people to travel. We always set ourselves the task of finding the most vivid and relevant ideas and implement them.”
However, Eleonora Romanova pointed out that consumer habits have been changing from less live TV, to more on demand and online video consumption. As a result, the airline and ad agency decided to create a six part online video show that is a mixture of comedy and documentary: “Sometimes it is useful to change your point of view. The main idea is to remind you that our planet is the best place to travel in the Universe, which we often forget about in our everyday fuss.”
In the same spirit, Evgeny Primachenko, W+K Amsterdam creative director, commented: “Creating Visit Earth was a great opportunity to not only produce content that would achieve S7’s brief to raise brand awareness, but also to make something that reminds all of us how lucky we are to live here and have the privilege to call ourselves earthlings.”
The campaign is underpinned by a microsite or online hub. Though the international, English language campaign launched more recently, W&K Amsterdam says that the Russian site has seen over 35 million visits over the past few months. There, visitors could watch all six episodes, as well as create their ‘travel guides’ for aliens, in exchange for a chance to win flights.
Finally, to make sure aliens actually see it and come and visit, the show has been beamed into space with a RT 7.5 radio telescope and a specially developed transmitter. Apparently, the signal is expected to reach the exoplanet Gliese 581c in 20 years – set your watches to 2039.
This case study was featured in SimpliFlying’s Airline Marketing Benchmark Report, which showcases the top airline branding strategies each month. Find out more here.