Not enough people think about giving travel as a gift. People think there are too many restrictions, a travel gift card would be hard to redeem, and, frankly, limiting. Also, gift cards, while convenient, have a stigma of not being very thoughtful.
For the holiday season, wanted to quiet these negative notions and quickly convey the Delta Gift Card is the GIFT OF LIMITLESS POSSIBILITIES.
On Instagram and Vine, we brought those possibilities to life with an engaging series of video "roulette" posts.
The first post rapidly flipped through Delta destinations. When the user tapped on the video, it paused on one of them—their "winning" destination they could visit with a Delta Gift Card.
The second post featured suggested recipients, from the common (Mom & Dad) to the unexpected (Office Crush).
The final post in the campaign suggested possible vacation activities, like Scuba Dive, Bike and Eat Local.
Each post featured 20 gorgeous shots, perfectly picked to inspire travel lust. And, they invited the user to tag someone to drop a holiday hint.
The posts were hugely successful, with the first becoming the most commented-on post on Delta's Instagram feed at the time. The campaign earned 5,000+ likes and 300+ comments, nearly all tagging another person. Success in Instagram led to additional posts in Twitter and Facebook, earning another 74,000+ views, 2,700+ likes and 360 shares.
Bolstered by a larger campaign, we exceeded our sales goal by 10% and saw a 78% year-over-year increase in the number of cards sold.
When we researched airline gift cards, the headline "Give the Gift of Travel" and an image of a globe popped up more than once (including on Delta's own site). Turns out, advertising for an airline gift card was as generic as a gift card itself. So we knew we wanted to tackle it in a whole new way.
The print campaign we created, Limitless Possibilities, used a fill-in-the-blank headline style: This Holiday, I'm sending _______ to ________." The idea was that people would mentally fill in the blanks with the people they'd give the gift to and the destination that person would want to go to. "...the honeymooners to Florida." "...my sister to Paris." "...my grandkids to visit me."
But social media provided something else to us...the gift of interaction. Sure, we could have followed the same ad format as the print, but we knew we could do better. We made a game out of it - an addictive, sharable game that you can't help but play more than once. It's a game that feeds into our quest for customized info "just for me". Is my destiny the lights of Las Vegas? The shores of Costa Rica? Transport yourself there with just a tap.
Also, this social campaign was incredibly resourceful. We got the effect of a video post by animating a handful of images - many of which were already owned by Delta. So a win for the budget as well.
Yes, it's a simple campaign, but it's a smart one. And puts a new spin on the "Give the Gift of Travel" globe for sure.
