Bristol Airport has announced a 12 days of Christmas campaign, offering surprise gifts to passengers as part of celebrating the festive season.
The carousel-led campaign urges social media users to swipe through a series of images to digitally ‘unwrap’ the gifts that lie underneath. The range of mystery presents have been donated by Bristol Airport’s partner retailers including Accessorize, Claire’s, Dixons Travel, JD Sports, WHSmith and World Duty Free.
Hosted on Facebook with promotional support from Twitter, the campaign was powered by leading digital agency, e3. It is designed to experiment with Facebook’s carousel format while honouring the airport’s loyal customer base, gifting them virtual Christmas presents to be unwrapped through digital means. Lucky winners will all receive their presents in time for Christmas.
Isabelle Whiteman, head of Marketing at Bristol Airport, said ‘We wanted to be a part of the festivities and Christmas cheer on social media. However, we didn’t want to contribute another standard 12 days of Christmas competition. Using Facebook’s carousel format in this way means that we can demonstrate our appreciation to our valued customers, whilst promoting our retail offer in a softer way.’
Associate creative director at e3, Nicholas Horne, said, ‘Facebook’s carousel is often something advertisers just use to sell more product. However, handled correctly, they can present the opportunity to think more creatively about the way we deliver a message. This campaign simply offers Bristol Airport customers a playful way to interact with some festive fun.’
Separately, citing a recent study by York Aviation consultancy for Bristol, the airport claimed that seven million airline passengers are wasting almost 1,000 years in additional travel time and spending GBP182m between them by choosing to fly out of the main London airports instead of their local airport. The number of passengers from the South West and South Wales flying out of London airports has risen by almost 20 percent over the past four years to seven million in 2015.
According to the study, last year alone, leisure passengers wasted GBP101m and business passengers GBP82m. The average holidaymaker lost GBP17 each per trip compared with GBP67 extra for each business passenger, the airport said, implying the benefits that regional airports, such as Bristol, offer to local passengers.
