How AirAsia used content marketing to drive a bookings take-off

Background and aim

This project had four core objectives. Firstly, it sought to engage with the audience through a wide range of content designed to promote the ‘fun and cool of Air Asia’. Alongside this, the campaign had a clear focus to drive awareness of Asia’s new destinations and travel possibilities by providing itineraries and trip suggestions.

The campaign was also tasked to entertain, via a video series, quizzes and competitions, in order to reinforce the brand’s ‘young and fun’ ethos. Last, but by no means least, the crucial KPI was to drive purchase intent.

Execution

The key focus was to be on content, powered by a fully mobile-optimised bespoke content hub, Travel Inspirations, hosted on Yahoo. It housed articles, videos, games, GIFs and infographics alongside ‘deals modules’ to drive consumers to the AirAsia booking site.

The site ran a total of 25 articles over the five-month campaign, each of which was designed to pique the interest of young and fun travellers, and introduce them to the possibilities for exploration that AirAsia could offer.

These were then backed up by native advertising and display advertising featuring high-impact images of destinations, and all of this was reinforced with a comprehensive social media effort.

The hub also featured five videos along similar themes, four quizzes, two infographics and three shareable gifs. All of these were extensively promoted across Yahoo Lifestyle Singapore’s Facebook page.

Lastly, a series of display ads, including a four-day takeover of the Yahoo login page, rounded-off the campaign, to maximise reach and awareness of AirAsia’s latest deals.

Results

The campaign received 478,000 views, exceeding its traffic goals by 90%, and 23% of this was earned media. Readers spent an average of 3.32 minutes on page, more than two times higher than a benchmark target, and 54% of traffic came from mobile. In terms of video, the strategy resulted in 1.6 million views.

A survey by Kantar Millward Brown showed the campaign achieved a 12.3% rise in brand favourability and a 10.7% increase in purchase intent. Meanwhile, the desired brand perceptions of ‘cool' and ‘fun’ rose by 12.5% and 13.2%, respectively.

People who visited the content site were 48% more likely to visit the official AirAsia site, while 27% were more likely to book a ticket with the airline.

CREDITS

AirAsia
Sharon Cheong, head of marketing
Christina Loi Yah huei, social media executive

Oath
Carol Tay, senior sales director
Nivedita Pillai, senior ad operations support coordinator
Dhruv Sisodia, technical sales operations manager
Stephanie Zheng, content producer
Kelly Ng, account management senior associate
Calvin Wan, senior field sales partner
Francis Fung, market research manager
Aude Percherin, strategist

Carat
Genevieve Tan, associate director