Marketing campaign urges fliers to share stories
Photographs of a soldier embraced by his tearful wife and daughter.
A selfie of a woman in her “first night in Vegas outfit” taken in the bathroom of the Sioux Falls Regional Airport.
A homemade video documenting a student pilot’s first solo flight.
Last month, the airport started using a website that urges airport customers to “share your story.” The campaign that uses Instagram, YouTube and the airport’s Facebook page is intended to show that the local airport is a place where people make memories.
“The idea is really to focus on how lucky we are to have the airport here, to have that place where families gather,” said Sharon Knoll, director of account services at Media One. “This is about the emotional things from Make-A-Wish kids taking off and coming back to a soldier coming home or a family reunion.”
The airport’s previous campaigns have focused on facts and the reasons why it is easier to fly local instead of driving elsewhere to catch a plane, Knoll said. However, the response to real-life stories has drawn more attention, she said.
Before the website went up, Media One began the campaign with a 30-second commercial using photographs taken when a member of the South Dakota National Guard returned from an overseas deployment.
Almost immediately, the spot got positive attention, with local radio stations talking about it and thousands of hits online, said airport executive director Dan Letellier.
“It really created some buzz out there on social media,” Letellier said. “We knew it would be impossible to see the commercial and not be moved by the story.”
Businesses today no longer can afford to ignore social media because their customers are likely to be commenting and posting things about them online, said Lorrie Thomas Ross, a national web marketing expert and author of “The 36-Hour Course to Online Marketing.” Companies and organizations need to embrace the new technology, but it’s important to do it “on brand and on purpose,” she said.
“The days of ‘Mad Men’ are over,” Ross said. “We don’t talk at our customers. We talk with them.”
Ross said user-generated content is popular, but companies have to give people a reason to want to share their content.
She said the most successful social media campaigns are genuine and allow customers to communicate directly with each other. The Sioux Falls airport campaign has an authentic feel, which encourages people to participate, Ross said
Dr. Dave Kapaska, chairman of a group of Sioux Falls business leaders who have been working with the airport on strategies to promote and improve services, said his group helped expand the campaign. The grant provided additional funding and allowed the paid commercial spots to be shown in more communities in Minnesota and west of Sioux Falls.
“We spent a lot of time and money to advertise more aggressively out in that area, to bring Sioux Falls back to the top of mind,” Kapaska said. “We had to make our circle larger.”