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Airlines Shift Their Marketing Strategies as People Start Traveling Again

With Americans returning to the skies this summer, airlines want to remind us that they’re still prioritizing safety.

· less than 3 min read

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With Americans returning to the skies this summer (we’re all going to be like Europeans and take the summer off now that we’re vaccinated, right?), airlines want to remind us that they’re still prioritizing safety.

  • Take American Airlines, for instance, which is testing “touchless technology” to keep travelers from sanitizing their hands every 15 minutes in an airport.

But: As vaccinations continue to take off, airlines are grounding some pandemic-related restrictions. Take Delta, which will ditch its April 2020 middle seat ban on May 1. Despite the loss of inventory, the Atlanta-based airline said the ban allowed it to charge higher fares.

So what do these notions of perceived safety have to do with marketing? Well…

Safety Dance

“We’ll still see some level of safety related messaging continue, at least for the near term. But it’ll shift from ‘It’s safe to fly’ to ‘Here’s how we are still keeping you safe,’” Charuta Fadnis, SVP of research and product strategy at Phocuswright, told Marketing Brew.

Alaska Airlines plans to take a more “emotional” approach in its ads, Natalie Bowman, managing director of marketing and advertising at the company, said in an interview.

  • “Those first few trips that you take post-pandemic are going to be more meaningful,” explained Bowman. So, for its last campaign, Alaska’s promo code was literally “BUCKETLIST.”
  • Not long ago, the airline highlighted its cleaning procedures with a spot featuring the ’80s hit Safety Dance.

A Delta marketer recently told The New York Times that even as its advertising veers into optimistic, hopeful territory, “we want to reiterate that everything we did in 2020 is not going away.”

Zoom out: While airlines will still address safety concerns, it’s likely their ads will strike an aspirational tone. As airline analyst Henry Harteveldt told Marketing Brew, “Safety is going to take a support role” in the future.

And we might see more than just a tonal shift. As interest in travel increases (per Google Trends, searches for “flights” are spiking), it’s possible that airlines will pull back on marketing spend.

  • “Travel is recovering pretty quickly. I don’t know if we’ll need to market very strongly in the summer,” Bowman said. “In 2020 we ran a lot of promotions...right now we don’t [have any planned for the summer] because the business doesn’t need it.”
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Marketing Brew informs marketing pros of the latest on brand strategy, social media, and ad tech via our weekday newsletter, virtual events, marketing conferences, and digital guides.