To portray Helsinki as an ideal meeting point between the East and the West, we needed to find common ground between the hemispheres. According to our research, one interest that is globally shared by representatives of our target group is fashion, so we decided to create a fashion event like no other - a runway show on a real airport runway - and broadcast it live over the web.

To ensure the show’s relevance to audiences in both Europe and Asia, we invited seven prominent designers from seven different countries in the target markets to show their collections at Helsinki Airport. The actual event, whose guest list consisted of hundreds of fashion influencers from around the world, was preceded by a five-month long, multichannel campaign intended to build up anticipation.

The 5-month campaign unfolded in phases designed to keep the audience interested:

• Week 8: Campaign launch, released date and teaser film about the theme of the coming event

• Weeks 9-15: Designer introductions, activations relating to designers

• Weeks 15-20: Activaton phase, continue with designer-related materials, start the build-up towards the main event  

• Week 21: The Runway Show, documented and live-streamed

• Week 22: The aftermath, The Runway hero film and making-of materials released

During the build-up phase of the campaign we focused mainly on digital channels and social media with Facebook and YouTube as primary channels and Instagram and Twitter in a lesser capacity.

The main event took place on an actual runway at Helsinki-Vantaa airport in front of a live audience of 500 fashion influencers. The event was broadcast live over the web and the audience shared their impressions in real time on social media.

This unique event created a lot of attention internationally – even the fabled Italian Vogue wrote about our show. We also received a lot of attention from local fashion influencers and a considerable amount of positive attention for livening up the fashion scene in general.

From a client perspective, The Runway reinforces Finnair’s service promise in an exciting new way and reflects Finavia’s commitment to fluent service. The campaign’s immediate media ROI was 136% (flight ticket revenue generated by campaign material during the campaign period), which is an excellent result for a branding campaign.  

The Runway exceeded the attention value goals set for the campaign and has gained extensive attention across the board:

- 39,4 million video views

- Over 450 Global PR hits

- Over 400 million earned media impressions,

with a value of over 3 M€

- Over 5 million engagements with campaign content