Nashville, Tennessee isn’t necessarily the most obvious destination choice when it comes to US cities to visit. They don’t have a Disneyland, Miami Beach or Empire State Building, but in Nashville they do know a thing or two about music.

We knew that lazy local stereotypes wouldn’t be enough to fill our planes, with many Brits wary of investing their hard-earned money on a country music pilgrimage. Equally, we didn’t want to disappoint those people who wanted to visit the city to do just that.

So, when British Airways launched the first ever direct flight from London to Nashville, we wanted to create a memorable live experience that united this broad range of British music fans. Truly authentic music experiences proved to be the audience unifier, so we challenged ourselves to directly connect the famous London music scene with Nashville’s offering in a way that had never been done before.

Our idea ‘Plug straight into Nashville’ was inspired by the direct flight product benefit and Nashville’s association with live music.

The fame driving activation element of the campaign gave the idea tangible meaning and was designed to get people talking about Nashville’s authentic music scene. It centred upon surprising music fans in a famous guitar shop on Denmark Street in London, by literally plugging them into a live transatlantic jam session with Nashville musician and four-time GRAMMY winning blues artist, Keb Mo. This idea then set the tone for the rest of the campaign.

Indeed, ‘Plug straight into Nashville’ was also brought to life across other more traditional channels, working equally well in executions that showcased Nashville’s other attributes. Consequently, people were left in no doubt that British Airways was now not only flying to ‘Music City’, but also ‘America’s next fashion capital’ and the home of ‘Southern Hospitality’.

If the experience wasn’t authentic, we knew our diverse range of music fans wouldn’t be interested. Our approach was to therefore use micro targeting to generate bigger conversations about our new route. We felt this would fuel our audience’s love of discovering new things rather than simply following the crowd.

Micro targeting was also the most cost efficient way of getting the type of content needed to make the campaign feel truly authentic. Specifically, it helped us to:

1. Attract more musicians to the guitar shop on Denmark street on the day of the activation.

2. Seed the captured guitar shop content with the right kind of influencers.

Along with the wider campaign which used broadcast media, we then made sure that these intimate experiences were overheard by our wider music loving audiences, giving the guitar shop activation the reach required to satisfy ambitious business targets.

We didn’t want to give too much away, so on the day of the stunt, simply hinted that something special was taking place on Denmark Street. We did this through targeted radio and some social teasers.

This exclusive stunt was then filmed live on location over one day, with Keb Mo, as a deliberate attempt to make the jamming session with him feel extra special. We then amplified the unique content captured through carefully targeted influencer activity, a long form film on YouTube and some enticing cut downs for use on social platforms.

Through targeting music fans on social with a laser focus around their passion point and love of authentic experiences, we could multiply our impact, reach and awareness to drive sales on a scale far beyond expectations.

This route is the latest success story for British Airways in North America. Sales are an impressive 25% above target, with a flood of new British Airways customers reflected in the booking data – 64% of customers who booked through BA.com were first-time visitors.

We also achieved an additional 1.8m impressions versus our target audience across the campaign period in Out of Home (equal to +£36,387 gross media value) and double the targeted impressions and click-through rate across social platforms.

The guitar shop activation was picked up by music and tech sites. It also performed exceptionally well in Hall & Partners campaign tracking analysis. Highlights included the activation achieving an impressively high score of 73% for differentiation (standing out from other advertising) and 81% of people agreeing that they’d be more likely book a flight to Nashville with British Airways on the back of the creative work.