As Brisbane Airport approached its centenary, the team identified an opportunity to move beyond a traditional birthday campaign and create a city-wide storytelling platform to reconnect the Brisbane community with the long history of the airport. The campaign anchored to the airport’s role in shaping the region’s growth, identity and sense of place.
The idea aimed to translate 100 years of history into an integrated campaign that the community could engage with in terminal, online, in the media and live events. The campaign shared the important history of aviation in Brisbane, Australia (connecting Brisbane with the world) and also the pivotal decision in the 1970s to relocate from the original site at Eagle Farm 5kms further away from the city to allow for future growth.
The campaign set out to instill pride, nostalgia and emotional connection among the wider community, airport employees and stakeholders while positioning Brisbane Airport as a long term social, cultural and economic enabler for southeast Queensland.
Specific goals were to:
Ultimately, the team aimed to turn 100 years into a 12-month shared experience of discovery, pride and connection.
The campaign began with deep archival research and collaboration with local historians, cultural institutions and the original architects behind Brisbane Airport’s former International Terminal. In the 1970s, Senior Architect Gavan Ranger led the design of the terminal and engaged fellow architect Don Watson for his distinctive use of colour and graphic patterning, which went on to shape the Terminal’s interior design.
Drawing on this legacy, Brisbane Airport worked with Ranger to revive and reinterpret elements of this historic visual language, using it as the foundation for the centenary brand look and feel.
A unifying graphic device and centenary lockup was developed and applied across hoarding, digital screens, merchandise and online platforms. The centerpiece in the system was a large scale in-terminal mural and timeline artwork placed in a high traffic area of the International Terminal.
Digitally, Brisbane Airport rebuilt its history webpage into a dynamic timeline and aerial slider that allowed website visitors to explore key eras in development, famous visitors and other aviation milestones. A centenary hero video brought key moments to life through archival footage and storytelling, while long-form blog content expanded stories and fortnightly social posts shared trivia and flashbacks.
Beyond owned channels, the team designed multiple entry points into the centenary story across earned media and experiential platforms. Local newspaper masthead (News Corp), The Courier Mail, lift-out and digital takeover presented the timeline as a keepsake for the community, while television, radio and news features explored major chapters of Brisbane Airport’s evolution, from wartime igloos to the present day.
Commercial partners also brought the centenary to life in unexpected ways, including airport duty free provider Lotte releasing a limited-edition 100 Years of Brisbane Airport whisky, extending the storytelling into retail and collector-culture.
Experiential activations allowed audiences to encounter the history in place. Brisbane Airport participated in Brisbane Open House, for the first time since pre-COVID, hosted Urban Sketchers at the Kingsford Smith Memorial, and later exhibited those works inside the Domestic Terminal. These experiences brought Brisbane Airport’s history into the passenger journey, making it accessible in everyday spaces rather than archives.
Public competitions and advocacy activity invited people to share their own airport memories. This ensured the campaign continued to evolve and reflected many voices, not a single corporate narrative.
Internally, the centenary was celebrated across staff channels, presentations, email signatures, screens, merchandise and events, ensuring employees experienced the same narrative as the public and strengthening organisational pride and alignment.
A key challenge was delivering a year-long, multi-channel campaign at scale without relying heavily on paid media. The team addressed this by creating a modular visual and narrative system that could be easily adapted across formats, leveraging bonus and negotiated media inventory including in terminal digital advertising screens and off-airport bonus billboards, securing organic distribution of the centenary video across News Corp’s coverage, and integrating centenary storytelling into business-as-usual communications and events.
The result was not a one-off anniversary campaign, but a living, city-wide storytelling platform, co-created with the people who have shaped Brisbane Airport.
The airport history hub became a primary destination for audiences. The webpage recorded 20,168 sessions, representing a 348% increase compared to 2024, with traffic driven by organic search, News Corp, Airport News eDM, organic social and corporate email banners.
Social media activity further extended reach and engagement, with 176 centenary-themed posts generating 1.16 million views and 17,735 engagements across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and X. Nine dedicated blog posts attracted 4,100 views, reinforcing interest beyond short-form content.
Community participation exceeded expectations. A dedicated social competition encouraging people to share their favourite Brisbane Airport memories received 363 entries, while the “100 Years, 1000s of Stories” advocacy activity on BNE Community portal for airport workers attracted 45 contributors, validating the campaign’s objective to surface many voices rather than a single corporate narrative.
The centenary also provided a platform to amplify existing community initiatives, including Brisbane Airport’s Lost Property Auction, which adopted centenary-aligned heritage aviation items and went on to raise a record $160,000 for The Courier-Mail Children’s Fund, the most successful auction to date, exceeding the goal of $100,000 by 60%.
The campaign also delivered strong earned and partner-led amplification. The centenary video achieved thousands of views across owned channels and was adopted by News Corp for organic placement alongside aviation-related coverage. Bonus out of home placements delivered an estimated $311,667 in media value, significantly extending reach beyond the campaign’s $150,000 allocated budget.
Collectively, these results demonstrate that the campaign met its objectives by driving discovery, engagement, and participation with the anniversary.
