Business travel exists in a peculiar dimension all of its own. It’s a mid-Atlantic, business-English world that talks the same language to everyone regardless of sex, nationality, business type or attitude. You don’t have to fly to New York, Frankfurt or Paris often to realise that this tends to compress business travel advertising into a narrow ‘appreciation band’ where the ads have to be understood immediately, by everyone everywhere. Which makes life hard for agency creatives looking for a compelling hook to hang an idea on.
Finding ideas that appeal equally to a 40 year-old Hong Kong businesswoman, the chairman of a major European brand and a 26 year-old male Scottish plant sales rep becomes an almost impossible task and agencies are forced to look for universally recognisable visual cues and copy, which means all things to all men and women. Not the ideal recipe for creativity.
The most readily used solution is to reach for stock photography: airbrushed thrusting 30-somethings stripped of context and personality; ‘dynamic’ action shots as similies for achievement, or that old standby – an image of an eagle to represent vision. And if all else fails, you can always bleed the page with your corporate colours and bung in a whopping big feature masquerading as a benefit.
The April issue of Business Travel World is full of these, but it also contains precious few ads that buck the trend and strive manfully to be ‘grown-up advertising’ in an environment of homogenised corporate background noise.
1. Air France
First up is the Air France ad. The advent of budget airlines has made Pan European business travel as simple – and almost as cheap – as hopping on and off a bus. But where some of the lower end carriers keep costs low by flying into obscure airfields in the sticks, the promise of flights direct to city airports has become a real value-added proposition.
In this ad, the runway ground crewman directing planes into the City is a simple metaphor for flying straight to the heart of London. Whether inviting an aircraft to land on one of the capital’s landmarks is entirely appropriate in today’s sensitive political climate is a matter for debate.
With much of the page devoted to a quite literal blue sky concept, space for body copy is at a premium. What to do in such circumstances? Stick a big fat benefit in the first line, add a lengthy list of connecting cities and use the small print to fill in the gaps.
2. Star Alliance
Next is an ad for the Star Alliance reward scheme. When you’re dragging your case through some far-flung airport at two in the morning, the only thing that makes it worthwhile is the thought that at least you’re racking up the reward points – and that the free flight from Liverpool to Glasgow (one way) will soon be in your grasp.
The trouble with ‘alliance’ advertising is that you have to pander to the brand sensitivities of each contributing partner. The danger is that the ad will find a lowest common denominator and do a passable impression of wallpaper. Thankfully, this has been skillfully avoided.
Clean, uncluttered art direction; a shot with considered composition; and pithy copy that tells a weighty tale – backing up features with attractive looking benefits. And about as good a way of showing 11 logos on one ad as it’s possible to get.
3. Citigroup
Oh dear. When the largest amount of space on your ad is given over to legal guff, you know you’re in trouble. However, having plodded through a clichéd stock library image, a headline that asks an irrelevant question and 50 words of text spat from the corporate platitudes generator, the legals look like your best bet for an interesting read.
My favourite bit is the heart wrenching plea to, ‘Please visit our website…’. Having bored the reader into a stupor, it feels like a desperate attempt to say, ‘we really are far more interesting than we look – all you have to do is waste half an hour of your life getting to know us better.’
The strapline just about sums it all up, really. ‘Global banking, global capital markets, global transaction services’ outlines the dangers of trying to be all things to all cultures and ultimately fails to engage anyone on a meaningful level. Globally dull, I’m afraid.
4. Portman
At the heart of every great ad is its proposition – that gem of absolute truth that forms the foundation of an engaging idea that drives reaction and response. The Portman ad is what happens when you don’t have a proposition, but you do have a budget for cheap stock photography. Using a premise of ‘smart’, Portman compares the attractiveness of a fat speccy bloke like me, with a smug model who spends his downtime fiddling with his laptop in his Airport Travel Tavern. All well and good; except the copy seems to have been bussed in from another unrelated ad.
It talks about earthquakes, political unrest and medical emergencies – by which time, smart people everywhere will have turned the page.
5. Emirates
Way back in a different life, I worked on the Emirates account; the look of every piece had to ooze opulence, luxury and profligate expense. Back in the upwardly mobile 80s, people were bedazzled by the lure of such things. However, in the globally-warming, carbon-offsetting 21st century, it seems that even Emirates have to accept that fuel surcharges are an extra expense too far.
While the pioneering move to absorb surcharges into its fares is a strong message, the ad neglects its responsibility to a brand built on the promise of five-star luxury. While some may argue that it’s straightforward, simple and direct, from where I’m sitting the ad looks exactly what Emirates isn’t. Cheap.
6. Eurostar
When you’ve got two things to say, what do you do? Buy two consecutive right-hand pages and stick your ads on them. The Eurostar ads employ a nice juxtaposition of ‘up and down’, opting for the ‘big headline’ approach. Always good if you think that pictures of people on trains are a bit dull. But the ad does throw up lots of questions. Most intriguing is the eerie glow behind the logo. Twinkling in the vast expanse of corporate darkness, is it representative of the light at the end of the tunnel?
Is letting you charge your phone and giving you a free newspaper really the best it can offer business travellers? Whilst people travelling for excitement and pleasure may ‘carry their journey with them’, isn’t it just a means to an end for business trips? In my experience, the business journeys I’ve ‘carried with me’ beyond the trip have certainly lingered, but for all the wrong reasons.
