Putting the fun back into flying

Thomas Cook Airlines is one of the biggest leisure airlines in the UK, flying from over 20 British airports to over 60 destinations worldwide.

Historically, customers perceived the airline as part of the main Thomas Cook Tour Operator and so a key focus of their brief was to help build awareness of the seat-only offering.

After a competitive pitch, we were engaged to develop a strategy for the brand that would increase brand engagement, audience growth and revenue via innovative content marketing.

Our key responsibilities include:

• Creation of global social-first digital strategy including; social channel split, content pillars and campaign 
• Monthly content calendar, with daily posts for Facebook, Twitter and instagram 
• Facebook media spend management, including daily optimisation
• Community management for Facebook, Twitter and instagram 
• Monthly and weekly reporting against KPIs 
• Campaign strategy and production for eight hero campaigns a year
   

Approach 

The strategy was based on an industry truth: flying is no longer fun. What used to be seen as special, is now a journey to be endured rather than be enjoyed.

As a dedicated leisure airline, Thomas Cook Airlines needed a strategy that put the fun back into flying; ensuring they can stand out in a commoditised, crowded market.

We used the hub, hero, hygiene model as a structure to create an integrated social strategy to build brand sentiment and advocacy.

Hero campaigns

Working closely with the brand and PR teams, we defined the 3 key buying periods for Thomas Cook Airlines each year, and created appropriate content activity to amplify the brand to ensure exciting social experiences to educate audiences about new destinations and offers.

•  Fantasy Flight - world first onboard virtual reality experience
•  #CatsOnAPlane - yes, we filled a plane full of cats
•  Hello Sunshine - an experiential event bringing the Caribbean sun to Manchester

Hub campaigns

Catch produce regular hub content to activate key milestones in the marketing calendar for Thomas Cook Airlines. For example, existing brand initiatives such as the Pride partnership and James Martin meals, as well as newly created campaigns such as #TCACrewStories.

As part of this activity, Catch’s work on the 2016 Pride Activation was one of the ‘Top 10 most engaged with FB Live streams of 2016’ by The Drum.

Daily engagement, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

The core objective of this activity is to create engaging content that can be partnered with clever social advertising targeting to generate strong ROI. This serves as a solid foundation for increasing audience sentiment and engaging users with larger scale campaigns.

We use both short term and long term planning models to ensure that content is created for key milestone days (eg International Women’s Day), as well as more reactive content to support industry-wide incidents and brand flash sales.

Monthly activity includes weekly social calendar production and planning, management of all social media advertising, post scheduling, social listening and reporting.

Results

All of our initiatives for Thomas Cook Airlines are underpinned by both weekly and monthly reporting, in order to showcase the true business value of social and content.

Catch has helped Thomas Cook Airlines to achieve:

•  Highest month ever for social bookings in April 2016
•  Highest month ever for social growth in January 2017
•  DADI Award Nominated for “Fantasy Flight” - Best Use Of VR
•  Danny Beard “Facebook Live” stream “Top 10 most engaged with FB Live streams of 2016” The Drum, December 2016