In a crowded holiday marketplace, Delta Air Lines wanted to break through with a campaign that spoke to the most important part of the season—the connections we have with each other.
And while we know that holiday travel has a bad reputation for stress, crowds and long lines, we see the good in travel every single day. And we wanted the world to see it—and share it—too.
If we're getting technical here, our campaign goals were to increase brand awareness and positive brand sentiment.
People value and desire connections, especially during the holidays, and while holiday travel is widely seen as a means to an end, we want the world to see the important role kindness plays in travel and bringing people together. Enter "Kindness Connects Us."
The multi-platformed "Kindness Connects Us" holiday campaign launched with an anthemic video in early December. The video highlighted the kind moments Delta sees every day among travelers and employees in the airport. The video ran on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, partner sites and influencer channels – collectively garnering 25.6MM video views.
Throughout the month, Delta published social posts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter that encouraged people to acknowledge kindness in one another and share stories of kind moments they experienced while traveling. Delta also retweeted noteworthy stories to show how kindness is all around us. Influencers extended the campaign's reach by sharing Delta's video on their channels, while also sharing their own stories of kindness and encouraging their followers to do the same.
Additionally, Delta sent a thank-you email to SkyMiles members reinforcing our message of kindness and thanking them for their loyalty and a great year.
We also took this kindness campaign on the road – to New York City, Boston and Seattle. Each airport had an activation consisting of a Kindness Connects Us wall where travelers could write a kind note to fellow travelers, put it in an envelope on the wall and take a note that another traveler left for them. Along with the notes, some of the envelopes included a Delta gift card or drink coupon as a way of saying thanks for spreading kindness. While travelers appreciated the gifts, they were more interested in – and touched by – the kind notes. To extend the experience to social, we shared the airport activations on Instagram Stories so Delta's followers could experience the activations in real time. Additionally, we partnered with Upworthy to organically post the "Kindness Connects Us" asset on both Instagram and Facebook – incorporating an overlay that natively integrates with Upworthy's style of posts. The asset seamlessly blended into Upworthy content, as its usual content is focused around uplifting, informative and inspiring stories.
We shined a light on the kindness that can be seen every day with an emotional holiday campaign throughout December. The anthemic holiday video shared via owned, partner and influencer channels reached our target market of emerging high-value customers (eHVCs) in seven global markets. Social comments were largely positive, as people shared their own kind moments and stories.
Instagram content achieved the highest engagement rate (2.46%) – outperforming network benchmark by nearly 2x
