The world is fuelled by love

The latest digital film released by British Airways narrates a heart-warming relationship that develops between a young flight attendant and an elderly passenger

Among other things that our country is known for, one of the most prominent is ‘emotions’, we are extremely emotional and love the feeling when someone triggers our soft corners with the simplest of things. This is precisely the Big Idea leveraged by British Airways in its new digital campaign. Aptly titled ‘Fuelled by love’, the campaign sketches a beautiful story of a British Airways’ flight attendant, who takes away numerous lovely moments on her first flight to India.

The campaign has gone viral in no time. With 11 lakh hits on YouTube so far, the ad film was directed by none other than Neeraj Ghaywan, the director of ‘Masaan’. The ad film shows how the British Airways’ cabin crew member Helena affectionately attends to the grandmother, who is moved by her kindness and invites her to her home.

Skeptical in the beginning, Helena finally decides to visit grandma, only to develop a further special bond with her and take back a beautiful image of India. And as the narration goes – ‘The more she discovers, the more she falls in love with’, the advert progresses to a voiceover – ‘fuelled by love’.

The most interesting part of the campaign is that the scenario, though sounding poetic, is not made up; it is inspired by real stories of the elderly woman and the crew member. Needless to mention, the ad, though now on offline platforms, was initially released only for the digital media, proving our point that digital is one of the best and of late, an independent platform to run a successful campaign.

While this is one of the takeaways of the campaign, the major lesson and insight every advertiser and marketer can have from this brilliant campaign by British Airways is that the brand focussed on listening. Yes, before making the statement ‘Fuelled by Love’, so loud and clear, it heard stories from its own employees and that’s exactly where most ideas and valuable experiences of your brand hide.

Needless to say that is the part where your corporate communications wing needs to be vigil; brands need to understand that before they say something loud to the masses, they need to take some time, sit back, shut up and listen to what people are talking about them, what good/bad are they experiencing with their firm and utilise the data, which is otherwise not available on any of the analytics websites that you launch a campaign on.

We just have one thing to say about the campaign – India, we deserved it for being British Airways’ seconds largest market in the world. Also, the fact that British Airways paid homage to over 90 years of its association with India is commendable. Campaign Takeaway- listening keenly to your publics (both internal and external) and having a strong emotional quotient always works.