Norse Atlantic Airways is a recently launched low-cost airline, flying to a number of long-haul destinations
The Challenge
As a new airline, Norse Atlantic Airways is still being introduced to prospective customers. As it entered one of its largest sales periods of the year, it set out to build its reputation as more than just a low-cost airline, honing in on its other USPs to form better connections with its customers.
To stand out against key players, cut through the noise and build brand awareness, Norse activated a programmatic video marketing campaign which ran alongside punchier, discount-led sales messaging across PPC, publishers and paid social.
Specifically, we were tasked to:
- Deliver a memorable ad experience across all 5 operational markets - US, UK, DE, NO and FR, measured by the lift in ad recall
- Drive an increased number of branded searches from their largest market, The US.
- Achieve an ambitious video view target.
The Strategy
Aligning with Norse Atlantic’s wider marketing campaign – tapping into the story of Leiv Eiriksson, the first European to reach North America – we devised a multi-market sequential messaging strategy, activated via YouTube.
Five different creative variations showcased cleverly spliced messaging to compare transatlantic travel a thousand years ago with travel on Norse’s Dreamliner today - each depicting one of Norse’s USPs: great food, in-flight entertainment, direct routes, spacious seats and a comfortable journey.
The activity targeted audiences that were in the market to travel as well as those showing an affinity for travel, but who hadn’t visited Norse’s site before.
During the campaign’s short two-week burst, YouTube’s Brand Lift Survey was configured to ask ad-exposed and non-exposed audiences whether they had recalled recently seeing Norse advertising. A separate search lift study helped us understand the uplift in Google and YouTube search behaviour for the brand post-exposure to an ad.
The Results
The strategy implemented for this campaign successfully moved the needle on top-of-funnel branding metrics to support Norse’s goal of boosting awareness during their sale period, while also showing the power of YouTube in sparking action in our audience, delivering an uplift in searches of the brand.
Over the two-week campaign period, we achieved:
- 5%+ lift in ad recall for users in our markets who saw the ad, including over 10% lift for UK, DE and NO.
- 217% increase in branded searches across YouTube and Google searches in the US.
- 11% increase in ad recall lift for the sequential messaging strategy vs non-sequential activity run in the past in Norway
- 21% higher VTR and lower CPM than forecast led to us delivering 21% more views than forecast.