British Airways has just launched a new positioning "A British Original" and a new campaign "Every Reason You Fly". The campaign breaks conventions by focusing on small moments that happen because of travel in their 15-second ads as well as the real reasons people travel.

Part of the campaign involves 500 ads which feature three radio checkboxes and the words "Business" and "Leisure" then a third set of words showing the real reason someone is traveling, such as "Because the weather sucks" and "Remission".

The campaign was made by the profuse Uncommon Creative Studio with MG OMD handling media.

It's one of those campaign that has excited agency folk with industry writer Tim Nudd declaring "British Airways' New Ads Will Make You Love Copywriting Again". However, the campaign has also come in for criticism from the marketing effectiveness community and some experienced marketers.

I wanted to use the campaign as a way to bring both sides of the house together to discuss why some people love this work and why others think it won't work. Since 2020 especially, online discussions about advertising have often and quickly become toxic with people speaking over, around, and beyond each other.

So I brought together Colin Lewis and John Long to hear their perspectives.

Colin Lewis has spent over a decade marketing travel brands such as Thomas Cook, Stobart Air, City Jet, and flybmi. The travel tech company he last worked at has sold over $1B of British Airways tickets. And he has strong opinions about what works with travel marketing.

John Long is ECD at LG’s in-house agency as well as the former global head of creative for The Economist and an ECD at Ogilvy NY. He recently shared a Twitter thread comparing old advertising to recent digital advertising that stoked strong reactions and he's worked on the Southwest Airlines brand.

You can find Colin here: https://twitter.com/colinalewis

John is here: https://twitter.com/janthonylong

The new British Airways campaign is here: https://www.lbbonline.com/news/there-are-over-500-unique-reasons-to-fly-in-british-airways-unique-campaign

You can listen to a Sweathead interview with Lucie Jamieson, Co-Founder of Uncommon here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-if-you-could-make-an-agency-from-scratch-lucy/id1370723809?i=1000472372492

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The Strategic Independent - Tom Crichtlow, Consultant

Sweathead, A Strategy PodcastBy Mark PollardSep 25, 2019