Client context:

Transavia is a low cost, fun airline but little known and increasingly competitive. The objective was to increase Transavia’s visibility and create brand preference by tactically reaching our target in their daily lives. Traditional media is extremely expensive and as a low-cost airline, Transavia has to deal with a reasonable budget. That’s why we had to propose a smart idea working within a tight budget.

Media context:

In France, there are four school holiday periods. During these periods, there is a drop of about 15% of media purchase and when the billboards are unsold, they are covered with green paper.

Unsold billboards in the subway are covered in green by the subway staff. This green happens to be Transavia’s color. We made those unsold green billboards become free Transavia ads. How? By asking people to tag @transaviafr on these green billboards in their Instagram stories and offer them a chance to win plane tickets by doing so. Behind each green billboard, a holiday destination was hidden.

Transavia’s challenge is to increase its notoriety and be spontaneously known on a competitive market. This airline has an important cluster of young urban clients who prefer to city-break several time a year rather than take one long vacation during school holidays. They are then in their home city during school holiday and can be sure to see subway walls cover of green billboards. By prompting people to put Transavia’s name virtually on green billboards that are undeniably in every French daily life, we launched a nudge to make them think about Transavia every time they see green billboards.

We launched this operation on April 24th, at the beginning of the spring school vacation with a video on various social networks. This video made an inventory of some unused green billboards in the subway and invited those who were not on vacation to post them on Instagram by tagging @Transaviafr to win airline tickets. As these green signs exist in all the transport authorities of France, all the French people were affected.

Every day, Transavia’s community manager counted green billboards discovered by travelers and animated this green billboard race via Instagram stories and Facebook lives. This operation lasted a week but since the unused green signs continue to exist, the notoriety of Transavia color will too.

1106 unused billboards

2 850 000 earned media

200 k media purchase for free

And now, every time someone sees a green billboard, they will think of Transavia.