You generally get what you pay for with low cost airlines: no
allocated seats, no food and prohibitively expensive extras every
where you turn. Budget German airline Germanwings wanted to
differentiate itself from the pack (which includes the likes of
Ryanair and Easyjet).
Germanwings sets itself apart as a low cost airline which does
give passengers allocated seats. In a piece of guerilla
marketing, six Germanwings members of staff boarded an Easyjet
flight, sitting in various parts of the plane. Each of them had
smuggled in different placards in the shape of speech bubbles with
various messages on them.
Halfway through the flight the airborne flash-mob (or
"plane-mob") started. In turn they each held up signs to create a
narrative. The first sign held up read "where are you dear?" The
next one, held up by a passenger at the rear of the plane read
"back here!" This carried on with: "And the kids?" with two signs
appearing from different rows saying "here". Then the criticism
started: "I hate this 'choose your seat' thing". When one of the
kids holds up a sign saying "mummy I have to pee", the response is
"only if it's free!" - a swipe at airline Ryanair which was
contemplating introducing a charge for people to visit the
bathroom. "That's not fair" is the child's response, which in turn
is met with "look out of the window - at least that's free".
Finally, the brand is revealed, with all of the planted passengers
holding up signs that encourage people to fly Germanwings. All of
this was, of course, filmed and then posted onto YouTube.
So far the video on YouTube has received almost 200,000
hits.