There is not any going back to normal Air New Zealand

Ad created for the reopening of the travel bubble

BRAND: Air New Zealand

PRODUCT/SERVICE: Trans-Tasman Bubble

OBJECTIVES: Create awareness of Air New Zealand services to and from New Zealand and increase sales

TARGET AUDIENCE: Travel starved 20 somethings

SMP: Fly to a picture-perfect paradise with Air New Zealand.

MEDIA: Social video (less than 2 minutes), Radio advertisement (30 seconds), Outdoor (bus shelter advertisement), Activation concept (written pitch description of the activation) document

MANDATORIES: Air New Zealand’s logo or name (radio): New campaign tagline

ALA202 – Copywriting and Ideation RICKY WRIGHT

 The advertisements

Outdoor advertisement

CLIENT: Air New Zealand

PRODUCT/SERVICE: Trans-Tasman Bubble

OBJECTIVES: Create awareness of Air New Zealand services to and from New Zealand and increase sales

TARGET AUDIENCE: Travel starved 20 somethings

SMP: Fly to a picture-perfect paradise with Air New Zealand

Headline:

Anything but Normal

Visual:

Hip young 20 somethings achieving a personal goal and celebrating in a pristine, picture-perfect, paradise natural setting. Alternative iteration is wrapped in bubble wrapping.

Call to Action:

Find yourself here. Quarantine free.

Logo: Air New Zealand

Figure 2Bus shelter image from Canva.com

Figure 31 Alternative Iteration – Bus shelter image from Canva.com

Radio advertisement

Client: Air NewZeaalnd

Product: Trans-Tasman Bubble

Title: There’s no going back to normal.

Date: 25 May 2021

Media: Social Video

Target audience: 20 somethings ready for travel

COUSIN JOE: They say in Aussie things are getting back to normal. I guess they will never know what amazing can be then.

WISE AUNT BETTY: Call your cousins across the ditch and tell them it’s safe to come. We’ll wrap them in this Bubble wrap.  

COUSIN JOE: Hey Cuzzy Bro. Yer no. It is safe to come now. We’ll wrap you in Bubble wrap. Sweet as.

COUSIN JOE: Yer no. I know it’s not normal but what has ever been normal about a Pacific Island paradise. The Wop wops of New Zealand have always been a place to come and find yourself anew.

SFX: ASMR sounds of bubble wrap popping.

COUSIN JOE:  Funtestic bro, and bring your jandals.

WISE AUNT BETTY: Quit messing with that bubble wrap we need it to make things safe.

FVO: Leave normal behind and choose a pristine paradise. Amazing picture-perfect destinations that will change you forever and leave you never wanting to see the old normal again.

There’s no going back to normal.

With the new travel bubble between New Zealand and Australia

The new two-way quarantine-free travel allows airlines and airports to operate without the requirement of quarantine. That means you can come to find your slice of paradise that will leave you never wanting to return to normal again.  If you can imagine it you can do it, there is potential everywhere for you to explore. New Zealand has pristine options waiting for you to create your unique itinerary and set yourself free. Come find yourself here and discover the new not normal.

While this can change, New Zealand is the best option for easy, drama-free international travel to one of the world’s most pristine and culturally rich Pacific island paradises. It’s also renowned for its fish and

‘Kia ora’ to our Kiwi neighbours.

Don’t think this makes everything normal though and it is not alright to keep stealing our cultural heritage, Pavlova, The Flat White, Lorde.

MUSIC: Adventure music fades

Social video

Client: Air NewZeaalnd

Product: Trans-Tasman Bubble

Title: Not Normal

Date: 25 May 2021

Media: Social Video

Activation

The activation is set on Cavil Mall on the Gold Coast. A place that has one of the highest Kiwi populations in Australia many of whom fit the 20 something demographic. It is also a busy mall and can attract much attention.  A similar event happens in Australia’s largest cities.

Figure 4 Cavil Mall popular with 20 somethings: image from https://www.tripadvisor.com/

The activation wraps the mall in bubble wrap overnight. Flash mob actors are also scheduled to catch public transport and arrive on a busy Saturday morning. When they arrive there a jubilant scene as these travellers bounce off one another all safely wrapped in bubble wrap. There are also Giant Zorbs in action.

The local radio station has previously announced that some fortunate contestants safely dressed (held in winter) in repurposed bubble wrap at the event will get to create their itinerary where they can find the new not normal version of themselves in New Zealand.

Stalls and footage at the event highlight the picture-perfect location that is New Zealand and there are travel gurus present that can match personalities to places.

Stories and footage taken serve as materials for social video.

Creative rationale – There is not any going back to normal.

The creative rationale comes from the insight that people’s expectations of paradise have changed and that any fancy safety holiday needs to come delivered safely wrapped in well – bubble wrap.  This is not normal. There is not any going back to normal.  And why would you want the new normal when you can have a pristine, picture-perfect paradise. And at Air New Zealand you can order a stay in paradise which will come delivered safely wrapped personally by your cousins across the ditch – who care about you despite the bickering that sometimes happens with family.

This fits with Air New Zealand’s 80 year-long brand promise of ‘liberating from the ordinary’ (GM of global brand and content, Jodi Williams cited in Bennett 2018). The cheeky approach of this campaign which uses an ‘amusing marketing approach ‘fun’, ‘safety, ‘energy’, ‘personality, and ‘the commitment to doing things differently’ leverages this legacy. The brands’ actions in ‘taking a lead, ‘looking at things in a fresh light, and to ‘keep surprising, innovating, outmaneuvering and challenging convention’ shows a commitment to the innovator archetype (Ibid). The camping employs this universal narrative to connote New Zealand as an accessible creative paradise where young people can find themselves.

Figure 5. The creator archetype (Iconic Fox (ND)

The secret to appealing to this archetype is to celebrate the creative process and inspire self-expression (Iconic Fox (ND).

Figure 6 Found Myself Image from Canva.com

 This fits well with the younger, travel-ready target audience who are ready to express their ‘true natures’ through travel. By providing an opportunity and space for innovation and creativity, sets the scene where the target audience can start to imagine a picture-perfect New Zealand holiday that allows them to express themselves with originality, creatively with freedom of choice.

Figure 7 Image created on Canva.com

In this campaign, New Zealand then becomes symbolic of the picture-perfect space to do this creative self-exploration.  

Figure 8 Image created on Canva.com

Young people get to play the creative innovator as they choose how to express themselves in bubble wrap and take a journey of self-discovery – but done safely with bubble wrap.

Figure 9 Image created on Canva.com

These strands become the binding agents across a campaign.

An activation where adventurers meet up and share stories of their journeys in a picture-perfect paradise of self-discovery that is anything but normal.

A Social Video which captures the epic adventure in a picture-perfect paradise, the sheer picture-perfect beauty of New Zealand which comes to connote the young peoples own journey of self-discovery. Not normal either.  

A Radio campaign inviting the cousins across the ditch to come to find themselves in a picture-perfect paradise -bubble wrapped and made safe especially for you.  Escape from normal.

Outdoor signage that celebrates finding yourself in a safe picture perfect-paradise.  Escape normal.

Feedforward response and informed reflection

In my feedback response with Cameron, I presented the idea of activation where things are wrapped in repurposed bubble wrap. The bubble wrap is perhaps repurposing from a cleanup event or simply to encourage people not to discard their left-over bubble wrap at the office. The idea of using bubble wrap combines a play on words and that when you use bubble wrap in postage it is there to keep things safe. Bubble wrap then carries its connotations of Safety.

The idea of using Bubble wrap and safety seemed to resonate with Cameron for this reason and I continued to brainstorm with this idea after our feedforward interview. In other words, the bubble wrap provided a bit of an insight or an Aha moment.  Insights are moments are described by ‘more than knowledge it is what the psychologists frame as an ‘Aha!’ moment. It is something that provides you with a deep understanding and realisation that you have connected with the consumer’ (Moriatyet. al 2015:192). While Cameron isn’t in the Target audience or in the consumer profile the feedback was useful because of his professional advertising experience. These days any version of a picture-perfect paradise (SMP) must include bubble wrap, and I would need to bring these ideas together somehow.

At the interview, I also bought up some additional ideas to do with having a competition where participants can use bubble wrap to promote the travel bubble. The main idea Cameron wanted to communicate was that it was important to pursue the SMP without getting distracted. Edward Boches (2015) also shows us that insights coming from observations can guide how an SMP can turn into relevant creative advertising that resonates with the target audience. I would also do well to come up with a tagline to reinforce the SMP (Landa 2016)

Cameron also suggested thinking back to some early advertising units and the way symbolism was used.  I went back and explored how archetypes by Spink and Landa (2012, paragraph 2) ‘represent core aspects of the human condition and tap deep into our motivations and sense of meaning’ and some readings I had on Roland Barthes. I also revisited Neil Gains and how the work links symbolism and storytelling to sensory experience in brand marketing using the five senses (Gains 2013). There is something very human about the attraction to the pop sound of bubble wrap and the protective newish quality it has. This was an idea that could resonate at a deeper level. The idea of the travel bubble seems to have caught the public imagination often represented on satire comedies and the like. Bubbles represent a place of safety after a difficult period in history and Cameron was right to bring out the symbolism involved.

Landa (2016) also reminds us of the importance of using universal narratives such as the archetypical characters and the quest involved in a story like Star Wars. My goal then was to use archetypes in a sensitive way that doesn’t play on negative stereotypes (as advised by Landa and Spink 2012, paragraph 3) but plays of the close relationship we have with our cousins across the ditch.

Cameron also reiterated the absolute importance of keeping the SMP firmly in mind when developing the idea further. Once again I found Landa’s writing useful here and committed to having my words and images (director and copywriter), ‘generate a pairing of words and images that communicate a specific message to a target audience’ because together the image and copy express the ad idea. Working as a team (Chapter 8, Section 2). Landa (2016) advises to start with the radio and I’ll do that to bring out the story using creative techniques (Altstiel & Grow 2017).

References

Altstiel T & Grow, J (2017), Advertising Creative Strategy, Copy, Design, 4th edition, Sage, Los Angeles, CA.

Bennett L (2018) ‘Air New Zealand: Standing out on the world’s tarmac’, AdNews Newsletter, 16 October, accessed 25 May 2021.

Bouches, E (2015), ‘The insight: The most important part of the brief’, Medium, 15 September, accessed 25 May 2021.

Ella, Z (2019), Zosia Ella’s Bible of ideation techniques, Copywriting and ideation ALA202, Deakin University.

Gains N (2013) Brand essence: Using Sense, Symbol and Story to Design Brand Identity, Kogan Page, London.

Howard-Spink J & Levy M (2002) ‘Using Archetypes of Building Stronger Brands’, Admap, October, no. 423, accessed 25 May 2021.

Iconic Fox (ND) ‘Brand Archetypes: The Definitive Guide’ Iconic Fox, accessed 25 May 2021.

Landa, R (2016), Advertising by design, 3rd edition, Wiley, Hoboken, NJ.

Moriarty, S, Mitchell, N, Wells, W, Crawford, R, Brennan, L & Spence-Stone, R (2015), Advertising Principles and Practice, 3rd edition, Pearson, Melbourne.

Mahon (2011:77-124) for ideation techniques to experiment with for Assessment three