Every marketer and publicist dreams of a campaign going viral. To have it become a talking point and shared and reshared thousands, or if you’re lucky, millions of times. It takes creativity, timing, a deep connection with your audience, and a pinch of luck to bring it off. While some are wildly successful (remember Dumb Ways to Die from Metro Trains?), most don’t make it.
Emirates Airlines had a win last week with their latest Fly Better release. The ad features a nausea-inducing shot of a flight attendant standing atop the world’s tallest building. Online chatter immediately kicked off about whether the ad was real and the level of CGI required to make it look so authentic.
Three days later, Emirates released a ‘making of’ video.
It turns out it was very real, and the only fakery was that the flight attendant was not staff, but a skydiver and stuntwoman. Cue more online chatter and an extraordinary amount of mainstream media coverage.
What a win!
It looks to me as though the campaign was cooked up in-house as I can’t see any mention of an agency in the coverage. The airlines Head of Brand also devised their last Fly Better campaign. Nice work.