Transavia & Ebay: ByeBye-Object Flight Converter
Transavia.com and eBay France needed to boost flight bookings amidst an economic crisis that limited consumer spending on holidays. They aimed to engage French consumers who desired travel but lacked disposable income. The objective was to create a campaign that generated significant media attention and a substantial increase in flight purchases.
Creative Idea
Unused household objects were ingeniously converted into direct payment for Transavia flights.
Transavia and eBay partnered to create "Bye Bye," an object-flight converter, allowing people to sell unused household items on eBay to directly fund Transavia flights. This ingeniously bypassed economic constraints by transforming dormant assets into affordable travel, proving that "useless stuff" could unlock desired experiences.
Creative Strategy Deconstructed
Company
Transavia offered affordable flights, while eBay provided a vast marketplace for selling items, enabling a unique flight payment solution.
Category
The travel industry typically requires direct monetary payment, while e-commerce focuses on selling for general cash, not specific purchases.
Customer
Consumers desired holidays but faced economic constraints, possessing unused household items they were reluctant to discard.
Culture
An ongoing economic crisis limited luxury spending, while a cultural shift towards repurposing and smart consumption gained traction.
Company
Transavia offered affordable flights, while eBay provided a vast marketplace for selling items, enabling a unique flight payment solution.
Category
The travel industry typically requires direct monetary payment, while e-commerce focuses on selling for general cash, not specific purchases.
Strategy:
Empower consumers to convert overlooked personal assets into aspirational experiences, bypassing traditional financial barriers.
Customer
Consumers desired holidays but faced economic constraints, possessing unused household items they were reluctant to discard.
Culture
An ongoing economic crisis limited luxury spending, while a cultural shift towards repurposing and smart consumption gained traction.
Strategy:
Empower consumers to convert overlooked personal assets into aspirational experiences, bypassing traditional financial barriers.
Results
The campaign achieved 330 million media impressions. It led to a +54% increase in Google searches for "transavia." Most notably, it resulted in an astonishing +45% increase in bookings.
330 million
media impressions
+54%
more search for 'transavia' on Google
+45%
increase in bookings
Strategy Technique
Build an Utility, Not an Ad
Transavia and eBay created a functional online converter that directly addressed consumers' financial constraints. This utility provided a tangible solution, making the campaign inherently valuable beyond traditional advertising.
Explore Technique
Creative Technique
Unexpected Utility
The campaign offered a novel online tool that transformed unused household items into a direct payment method for flights. This provided a practical, unexpected solution to the financial barrier of booking holidays during an economic crisis.
Explore Technique
Craft Breakdown
This campaign's craft is exceptional in its technical execution of a complex digital tool, seamlessly linking e-commerce with travel, amplified by imaginative visual storytelling and strategic media deployment that transformed everyday objects into travel aspirations.
The development and seamless integration of the 'object-flight-converter' tool, enabling direct conversion of eBay sales to Transavia flights via PayPal, demonstrates robust and user-centric digital engineering.
The visual concept of transforming 'useless' household items into desirable travel destinations, evident in the street installations and the symbolic 'Europe map' from clutter, created a compelling and memorable visual language.
The strategic use of a multi-channel approach, from innovative teasing street installations with QR codes to traditional billboards and PR outreach, effectively generated buzz and directed traffic to the conversion tool.
The impactful and witty 'Ceci est...' statements, directly linking discarded objects to aspirational travel experiences, were instrumental in the campaign's teasing effectiveness and clear communication.
The campaign's magic came from the synergistic combination of an innovative digital platform with highly creative and strategic physical and textual communications, effectively making a complex mechanism feel simple and inspiring.
