2009 PRO Awards: Fill the Plane
Agency: GMR Marketing
Client: Orbitz
Online travel is a treated by consumers as a commodity sector with little loyalty. All strategies tended to be the same: price. Orbitz wanted to break out of the pack with a promotion that would allow them to own the business leisure travel customer. Fill the Plane was a viral promotion that challenged entrants to be the first to fill 300 seats on an airplane seat diagram. A forward-friendly video email encouraged users to invite their friends to join their plane and keep forwarding.
Online banners generated over 22.1 million impressions. Word-of-mouth was used to integrate the Orbitz promotion in blogs, message boards and chat rooms. In addition, flight attendants were deployed to high traffic areas in large cities positioned in areas that attracted business professionals going to and from the office. They handed out flight safety cards, conducted flight safety demonstrations and gave away peanuts.
More than 5 million media impressions were generated. Nearly 2,500 planes were created with an average of 7,297 entrants in a seven-day period. Orbitz garnered 5,318 new online registrations and 2,616 opt-ins with the Fill the Plane promotion.