Back-Pack To Reality / A Ryanair Campaign Proposal
STAD UP is an advertising agency formed as a university project by a group of creative GenZ minds. During our classes, we were asked to choose a potential client and, according to a hypothetical brief, create a complete marketing campaign along with a suitable communication strategy.
As an agency focused on the mindset of the GenZ youth, we started our project by focusing on the general interests of this generation in order to determine the main concept of our campaign.
Apart from the apparent presence of social media in the daily lives of GenZ, we noticed a growing interest in traveling among the 18–25 age group. Thus, we reached the decision to combine the youth’s interest in affordable trips with friends with their interest in social media for an airline advertisement.
While conducting research in order to find an appropriate client within that sector, Ryanair’s social image, as well as its mission and vision, seemed to match these qualifications. Ryanair is the largest airline in Europe by the number of passengers carried. Ryanair’s mission is “to offer low fares that generate increased passenger traffic while maintaining a continuous focus on cost containment and efficiency operation”. Its vision is to be the greenest, safest, and most on-time airline in Europe and to have a happy team with a spirit of fun. Ryanair stays true to its brand values with an emphasis on “freedom”, “fun”, and “fairness”. It is an airline especially known for its contribution to the reinforcement of sustainability goals and its social impact on diversity and equality.
Furthermore, we chose Ryanair because its vision to enable people to explore the world meets the dreams and interests of GenZ, while the low-cost traveling model that Ryanair follows mathes GenZ’s financial status. Finally, Ryanair’s presence on social media offers an already established, engaging with the GenZ community, and fun brand image.
Going forward with the planning of our marketing campaign we took into account the hypothetical client brief. More specifically, we were asked to create a seasonal campaign for summer 2022 that would incorporate the end of the quarantine and the incentive for planning trips. It would, also, welcome more GenZ people to travel and utilize Ryanair’s services and low-cost offers, as well as make use of Instagram and TikTok’s reach among the younger generation.
Based on these grounds, our idea for the campaign is to “BACK-PACK TO REALITY”. We developed our idea around the following message, trying to appeal to the inexperienced youth who, after the limitations of COVID-19 were lifted, are trying to travel in an affordable way.
Two years of quarantine and social distancing
have made you put your life on pause.
Now it is time to press play,
feel young, wild, and free again!
You can finally visit your dream destination
so stuff your back-pack to reality!
Firstly, in order to plan out, monitor, and assess our campaign efficiently we decided to set some clear and measurable objectives. We aimed to connect Ryanair’s brand name with the new generation of travelers, increase the number of Greek followers across all social media platforms, reinforce Ryanair’s marketing presence in Greece, and lastly, boost brand loyalty and social media engagement through user-generated content. Moreover, we created a detailed buyer’s persona, taking into account general personal data, personality traits, and interests, so that we can ensure the optimum targeted marketing.
Now we can dive a bit deeper into the creation of our communication strategy for “BACK-PACK TO REALITY”. We focused on specific communication channels; Instagram and TikTok, which are the most popular among GenZ, and we used influencer marketing, in order to reinforce Ryanair’s social media presence.
According to our campaign, a challenge will run through these social media platforms. More specifically, while on their trip with Ryanair, followers will have the chance to be part of our social media challenge, and they will be asked to complete simple tasks and upload them on Instagram or TikTok tagging Ryanair and using the hashtag #backpacktoreality. Some of these simple tasks can include trying a local treat and recording their reaction or singing a Greek song at the top of their lungs in public. At the end of the campaign, Ryanair will announce the winners who have completed all the challenges and they will be given a backpack matching our campaign’s slogan, which could be a companion for their next trip with Ryanair.
This challenge will be supported furtherly by our influencers. We decided to approach famous Greek TikTokers, who are going to be our #backpackers. They will travel, make the challenges real and then share their experiences with their followers. In order to choose our influencers, we conducted research on TikTok trying to find creators that upload mostly entertaining, fun, and relatable to the youth content. We ended up picking three famous TikTokers.
- Konstantivaa and Miyiaki, two Greek TikTokers that create funny skits and commentary videos, who will travel together as a comedic duo
- And Inaki, a Spanish TikToker that speaks Greek fluently. While the other influencers will travel abroad, Inaki will show Greece’s perspective on the challenge.
Lastly, we created a campaign timeline in order to ensure our adherence to a schedule and an organized actualization of our campaign. It is of immense importance to us to include a time period that will contain teaser posts that will raise our audience’s attention on our upcoming project and a long enough time period for the influencers and followers’ trips to end.
As depicted in our campaign timeline, we have included a time period devoted to the evaluation of our campaign. We believe this will help us point out the strengths and weaknesses of our communication strategy, thus, enabling us to implement corrections on our upcoming projects. This evaluation will be done according to specific and measurable metrics that we have set ourselves including; the increase of Instagram followers by 3%, the influencers’ reach on TikTok exceeding 50k views per video, the mark of 1.7m followers on TikTok, as well as, the increase of traffic and conversions through Ryanair’s site.
As a GenZ advertising agency, the aesthetic presence of our campaign through social media is important to us. That is why we paid attention to the graphic aspect of our posts, trying to maintain a trendy (and witty) element. Moreover, we created some visuals for our campaign that will help us keep a constant social media presence with regular content.
TEAM MEMBERS:
Professor: Betty Tsakarestou
