United Airlines launches a global advertising campaign this month
through Young & Rubicam to highlight improvements to its products and
services.
A series of four commercials will focus on individual aspects of United
Airlines’ service offering such as its comfortable business-class seats
and its frequent flyer programme, Mileage Plus.
The campaign uses simple poster-like images to convey messages
efficiently to markets across the world.
United’s comfortable business-class seats are illustrated by a packet of
pills. The camera zooms in on an individual pill which, on closer
inspection, turns out to be a luxurious airline seat which we see
opening out for maximum comfort as the words ’warning: can cause
drowsiness’ appear on the screen.
To convey the benefits of the Mileage Plus scheme, a spot shows a space
shuttle launch, making the point that space travel would be the only way
to collect air miles quicker than with United’s Mileage Plus scheme.
The campaign’s endline is, ’People who fly for a living fly United.’
The work was devised by creative teams from a number of Y&R offices -
London, Miami, New York and Dentsu Y&R in Tokyo. It was co-ordinated by
Y&R New York and is scheduled to run initially in the UK and Germany,
extending to other markets later in the year.
Y&R won a chunk of United Airlines’ pounds 70 million global business,
which it shares with Fallon McElligott, two years ago, ending the
airline’s 31- year relationship with Leo Burnett.
