To promote its brand new ski routes, Monarch Airlines is launching a direct mail campaign with mobile image recognition platform, Blippar this week.  Featuring British Triple Olympian and brand ambassador, Chemmy Alcott, the unique campaign allows Monarch’s customers to bring the slopes and its new destinations to life through the Blippar app on the mobile device.

 

The campaign, created by direct response and relationship marketing agency WDMP, is the first ever airline marketing campaign to use this technology to interact with its target audience. It aims to highlight the fact that, through Monarch’s new routes, skiers and snowboarders have new ways to access the best snow in Europe. 

 

An innovative, supersized fold-out mail pack will be sent out to a ‘hot-list’ of over 55,000 snow sport customers, targeted through a profiling tool developed by WDMP. The pack unfolds to reveal an impressive die-cut mountain range with aspirational images and action shots of the new destinations available to Monarch customers through its new routes to Innsbruck, Grenoble, Friedrichshafen and Munich. As well as the direct activity, Monarch is  running a wider ski campaign, which has seen experiential ‘Schuss’ après ski bars at snowdomes across the UK and a national advertising campaign also using the digital technology.

 

Recipients will be able to download and open the free Blippar app on their smartphone or tablet, hover it over the pack and instantly explore the resorts, view a 3D mountain and an engaging video introduction from Chemmy, including footage of her training on the slopes. Customers can zoom in and out of the mountain by moving their device closer or further away from the pack and can click on the destinations to view more information and a ‘Top Trumps’ style rating of 12 key resorts.

 

Enhancing the consumer engagement aspect of the campaign, users are also able to share information about the resorts through their social media channels as well as a photoshare function. This enables them to capture their photo inside a snow globe and share on Facebook.  A series of extra videos are hidden across the mountainscape which, once users discover and click, will unlock further sound bites of Chemmy showing off her recommended pre-ski warm up exercises and top tips.

 

James Massey, Head of Marketing at Monarch commented: “The interactive DM pack produced by WDMP captured and brought together everything we hoped to achieve. The pack looks fantastic and the Blippar experience is amazing. We really can’t wait for the coming winter season as Monarch continues to expand in new directions - in both our product offering and, crucially, our customer engagement approach’.

 

Craig Wheeler, Managing Director of WDMP adds: “We are delighted to be bringing a first to the airline industry with Monarch. We are confident the involvement of augmented reality and social media channels will drive significant engagement and results”