Understanding and Implementing IMC

Understanding and Implementing IMCIntroductionOriginated in 1940, Air New Zealand is an Auckland-based national airline and flag carrier of New Zealand. With its slogan “Amazing journeys. Every day” the company operates passenger flights to 27 domestic destinations and international destinations in 15 countries in Europe, North America, Asia, and Oceania. The company carefully builds its brand around the following values: “Welcome as a friend”, “Can do”, “Be yourself”, and “Share your New Zealand”. The value “Welcome as a friend” is embodied in the warm style of service that is designed to create a “kiwi” style of service. Air New Zealand used data on customer perceptions of kiwi values to determine what behaviours were associated with the truly New Zealand service style. The company is thus increasingly friendly and trusting towards its employees. “Can do” value postulates itself through flexibility of the company in approaching strict rules and regulations that allows its employees liven their perspective of friendly, warm and open customer service. The approach “Be yourself” is taken by Air New Zealand to differentiate itself from low cost carriers and competition in order to demonstrate that the company as a national flag carrier fully understands that it may be the first and last point of contact with New Zealand for many tourists and business visitors. Thus, the company actively differentiates itself from other businesses that operate in the industry through its website, its aircraft, staff uniforms and in-flight entertainment. The company also associates itself with the Maori culture and has established a role of Maori Culture Ambassador. Finally, “Share Your New Zealand” is a brand value that translates itself through communications throughout the client’s journey. Those communications may include advertising, web-based experience, restaurant recommendations, on-board entertainment and similar mediums. This paper focuses on “Nothing to Hide” communications campaign and the following series of videos that were released by Air New Zealand to demonstrate and build its brand values through an integrated marketing communications campaign. It should be stated that “Nothing to Hide” that was launched in 2009 became increasingly popular among watchers around the globe and videos pertaining to this campaign received millions of views on YouTube. The following campaigns featuring Rico (a puppet) were also extremely popular. Thus, IMC campaign of Air New Zealand can serve as a good example of an IMC campaign since the company was capable of measuring the results (number of times the video was watched), the campaign was not very expensive, videos quickly became viral (although the company did not plan for it), and since consumers chose to watch the videos, the campaign had an apparent success. Air New Zealand IMC campaignAir New Zealand launched its “Nothing to Hide” campaign in 2009. The campaign was created in order to proclaim that the company is willing to share and connect with its clients. Advertising videos included into the campaign were featuring ANZ staff wearing nothing except body paint. One of the commercials explained that the company has “nothing to hide”, thus the price of on-board …