How Turkish Airlines Increased Brand Awareness With Selfies

A brand says everything about you. It speaks about who you are and how much you have achieved. That’s why companies are always searching for innovative ways to imprint their brand in the minds of prospective customers around the world.

Turkish Airlines recently reached an achievement in their quest to increase their brand awareness across the world. Their goal was to bring attention to their brand among a larger audience, including anyone with a desire to travel, as well as make traveling the world more accessible by flying to nearly 200 international destinations.

Their motto, “Globally Yours” helped to increase awareness by creating a media buying company image that enhanced their brand. Now, Turkish Airlines is an important player in the world of global aviation, not only because of the brand identity that they took so much pain and effort to develop but because this identity emphasizes progress and shows that the airline is moving into the future.

What Does Turkish Airlines Offer?

Turkish Airlines has an extensive fleet and its services include one-stop connections between many cities around the globe. Customer service is of utmost importance and airline employees try to make passengers feel special by providing comfort at different points of travel, giving them pleasant surprises and ensuring that their trip will be memorable. Superior service is what make Turkish Airlines stand apart from its competition and they are constantly involved in the process of increasing customer satisfaction.

Turkish Airlines’ Strategy

To achieve their goal of increasing brand awareness, the marketing team at Turkish Airlines put their heads together and decided to create a campaign that would wow the audience with the spirit of the company. With the help of Google, they created a custom channel centered on taking selfies, an activity which has exploded in popularity over the past few years. The channel, based on YouTube’s platform to reach a larger audience, was fully interactive and ended up being wildly successful.

How did they achieve this?

Turkish Airlines’ new motto “Widen your Horizon” invites passengers to explore new horizons on their journey with the airlines. For their newest advertising campaign, Turkish Airlines decided to have 2 great stars – Kobe Bryant and Lionel Messi- vie for the attention of one star-struck kid. But the topping on the cake was the campaign’s sequel, a YouTube ad titled “Kobe vs. Messi: The Selfie Shootout.” The ad went viral attracting 77 million views and increasing brand awareness in Europe, Middle East, North America and the Far East. Soon after, the ad became YouTube’s fastest spreading commercial.

In the video, Kobe and Messi are seen to be competing to take the best selfie. They continue their friendly rivalry by trading selfies taken in exotic locations, such as the Red Square in Moscow, the Great Wall of China, Maldives, and Bangkok. In the final shot of the ad, they show Messi taking a selfie in Sultanahmet Square in Istanbul only to be photobombed by Kobe.

This commercial has helped the airline increase knowledge of their brand, as it took the action from inside the cabin to the places in the world that the Airline frequently travels to. It also emphasizes their global reach as well as helped to put a smile on the face of its viewers. These factors are what made this ad so special and increased their brand awareness to such an extent.

Creating a brand identity requires out-of-the-box creativity and Turkish Airlines got it right with its Selfie advertisement that brought the brand name to the forefront of global aviation.

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