Airports can be lonely places. Especially when you are travelling at Christmastime, a time for sharing, unity and togetherness.

KLM is in the business of bringing people together all around the world. What if it could already bring people together while they were still en route?

We installed a table for 20 at Schiphol airport, but it was 4.5 meters high, so people could not reach the Christmas dinner served on it. 20 stools surrounding the table were equipped with pressure sensors. With every traveller who sat down on a stool, the table was lowered a little.

Travellers were excited and started to work together to lower the table. People from all over the world (20 different nationalities) put their phones or books aside and enjoyed a very special Christmas dinner together. We filmed the event and shared the video –all about sharing, unity and togetherness– online right before Christmas.

In the busiest part of one of Europe’s biggest airports, we built a table you couldn’t miss. It was there during Christmas, giving every traveller that day the opportunity to use it and thus bond with fellow travellers. The table had a Christmas dinner on top of it, towered 4.5 meters high, and was surrounded by 20 stools. Every time a person sat down on a stool, the table was lowered a little bit, inviting strangers to work together. When the table had been lowered, 20 strangers bonded over a Christmas dinner together. The people participating were real travellers, many of whom had even stood in line to wait for their seat at the table A compilation of the day’s best moments was shared via KLM’s social channels just before Christmas.

In just a couple of days KLM’s Bonding Buffet video grew to be the most popular KLM online video ever. Within weeks it reached over 100 million (!) people worldwide, collected over 72 million views and was shared almost 500,000 times. Over 2 million people gave it a Like or a ‘Great’ (Big Like) and comments were almost exclusively very positive. Almost 80% of these results were accomplished via organic reach / earned media. Many national and international blogs picked up the video, most notably the International Business Times and 9GAG. Each and every editorial piece was positive about KLM’s initiative; media called it the very best Christmas campaign of the season.

The Direct Lions celebrate response-driven and relationship-building creativity. With a heart-warming brand message of unity and togetherness, and just a very soft call-to-action, we were able to motivate our target audience to engage with our brand and massively share our message via social media. This produced astonishing results (measurable and meaningful). Over 80% of the audience we reached was reached via people sharing the brand’s story with their friends or through editors spreading our message. Based on this fact and the very many positive comments to our message, we believe this work is relevant for Direct Lions.

KLM wanted to bring across a message of unity, togetherness and sharing during the Christmas season. Based on the insight that airports are always crowded with people, many of whom may feel lonely there (especially when travelling at Christmastime), we decided to build a story about strangers opening up to each other and coming together in this hectic place.

Because of KLM’s big ambition to reach as many people as possible worldwide, we decided to go for the creation of social content people would love to share.

We created a heart-warming social video around a surprise Christmas buffet at Schiphol airport. A message about unity and people sharing, which tied in with the Christmas spirit and KLM’s brand purpose. A message that just about anyone in the world would like to engage with, and therefore very many would like to share, at the end of a year full of turmoil.

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is in the business of bringing people together: it unites families, friends and other relations all over the world.

At the end of a year with much turbulence in this world, KLM wanted to use the days around Christmas to communicate a message of unity, togetherness and sharing. A message that would touch people, create sympathy for the brand and contribute to KLM’s brand purpose “Moving your world by creating memorable experiences”. KLM asked agency to create this message. As always it asked us to develop a story that would revolve around real people, not actors. Since Christmastime is one of the busiest times of year for the airline, the realisation of the concept could not have too many logistical implications for them. KLM would need all hands to secure smooth running of their operations at this time of year.