Turkish Airlines Unites Global YouTube Stars In New #FortuneTraveller Campaign

Air­line with impec­ca­ble YouTube track record set to roll out new cam­paign.

Pat Hong By Pat Hong from Linkdex. Join the discussion » 0 comments

After a series of high-pro­file YouTube cam­paigns, fea­tur­ing glob­al sports stars includ­ing Lionel Mes­si, Kobe Bryant, and Tiger Woods, Turk­ish Air­lines has turned to the video shar­ing plat­for­m’s inter­nal tal­ent for their lat­est cam­paign. Bring­ing togeth­er the most pop­u­lar YouTube tal­ent in a col­lab­o­ra­tive #For­tune­Trav­eller vlog­ging event, the cam­paign is set to win glob­al reach via the mas­sive social fol­low­ings of enlist­ed vlog­gers.


In a few short years, Turk­ish Air­lines has devel­oped a rep­u­ta­tion for cre­at­ing excep­tion­al brand­ed video con­tent on YouTube. By far, their most trav­elled piece of con­tent has been the ‘Kobe vs. Mes­si’ videos, both of which have amassed more than 100 mil­lion views.

Here’s the first of the two videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UUSK1_qvsEuTNZnvLQvNRLGQ&v=ruav0KvQOOg

While sign­ing up two of the world’s biggest sports stars was undoubt­ed­ly a expen­sive move, the per­for­mance of the videos builds aware­ness and reas­sur­ance among a world­wide audi­ence of con­sumers, exact­ly the kind of mar­ket­ing push that is cru­cial to an inter­na­tion­al air­line.

It’s led to Turk­ish Air­lines win­ning a lead­ing 29.5 per­cent share of over­all social media shares in the Trav­el and Trans­port ver­ti­cal on YouTube.

The cam­paign built upon pre­vi­ous efforts by the air­line to uti­lize glob­al sports stars to cre­ate com­pelling and share­able con­tent, which as the fol­low­ing video fea­tur­ing Tiger Woods shows, nev­er strays far from the air­line’s lux­u­ry and lib­er­at­ing brand iden­ti­ty.

Again win­ning a siz­able audi­ence, Turk­ish Air­lines’ activ­i­ty on the chan­nel serves as a great case study of YouTube best prac­tice for brands, and the scope of what can be achieved when brands com­mit to big-bud­get dig­i­tal video con­tent.

#FortuneTraveller

Today it was announced that Turk­ish Air­lines, in part­ner­ship with cloud-based glob­al video dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work, Right­ster, will see the air­line send a group of the biggest stars on YouTube in a co-ordi­nat­ed, glob­al trav­el vlog­ging cam­paign.

Under the #For­tune­Trav­eller ini­tia­tive, the project will fly YouTube stars such as Devin Super­tramp, the U.S.-based video­g­ra­ph­er with a fol­low­ing of more than 2.5 mil­lion sub­scribers, and Dami­an Wal­ters, the UK stunt­man with more than 475,000 sub­scribers, to Istan­bul with a pass­port, a cam­era, and min­i­mal pos­ses­sions.

Once in Istan­bul the stars will meet and togeth­er will take part in a tra­di­tion­al Turk­ish for­tune telling event, where they will learn their trav­el­ling for­tunes. The YouTu­bers will then be sent to one of Turk­ish Air­lines’ 260 des­ti­na­tions (inci­den­tal­ly, the air­line flies to more des­ti­na­tions around the world than any oth­er air­line) and the vlog­gers will record all their expe­ri­ences from Istan­bul to their cho­sen des­ti­na­tions.

Reaching Global Audiences Via Digital Talent

The ini­tia­tive will bring togeth­er tal­ent from 10 coun­tries, cov­er­ing all the major glob­al YouTube net­works and Turk­ish air­lines major mar­kets.

In a press state­ment, Neset Dere­li, Turk­ish Air­lines’ inter­ac­tive mar­ket­ing man­ag­er, said:

This part­ner­ship show­cas­es the increas­ing impor­tance of glob­al YouTube net­work part­ner­ships deliv­er­ing long-term suc­cess for brands on the plat­form. Bring­ing togeth­er cre­ators from mul­ti­ple net­works and uti­liz­ing Rightster’s exper­tise in cre­at­ing brand­ed con­tent will mean we have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to reach a tru­ly glob­al audi­ence.”

And while the move does depart from the use of high-pro­file sports stars as a means of secur­ing audi­ences and engage­ment, if any­thing, the cam­paign has even greater poten­tial to reach glob­al audi­ences. Sub­scriber fol­low­ings for YouTube stars can num­ber into the mil­lions, with indi­vid­ual videos often gain­ing huge num­bers of views.

Turk­ish Air­lines’ cam­paign speaks of a brand that both under­stands, and feels com­fort­able tak­ing risks on YouTube, and recent stud­ies indi­cate that as a trav­el brand par­tic­u­lar­ly, the air­line has every­thing to gain.

The #For­tune­Trav­eller cam­paign will run until the end of Novem­ber and can be fol­lowed on the offi­cial Turk­ish Air­lines YouTube chan­nel.


Should oth­er brands be fol­low­ing Turk­ish Air­lines exam­ple, uti­liz­ing the best of YouTube’s tal­ent?

Pat Hong

Written by Pat Hong

Editor at Linkdex/Inked, Linkdex

Pat covers the SEO industry, digital marketing trends, and anything and everything around Linkdex. He also authors Linkdex's data analysis and reports, analysing the state of search in various industries.

Inked is published by Linkdex, the SEO platform of choice for professional marketers.

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