Taking Icelandair to new heights with people-powered performance marketing

Brand cohesion and innovation to lay firm foundations for success

Activity period: 2024

Challenge

Launch was challenged with enhancing Icelandair’s brand awareness and driving more bookings with minimal budget increase. The airline’s customer base is peppered across a number of regions globally, but before Launch took on the account these weren’t consistent in terms of brand identity, leading to ineffective campaigns and diluting brand messaging. On top of this, creative assets – a linchpin of customer engagement, particularly in the travel market – were not optimised.

22%

increase in conversions on search

34%

increase in clicks on paid social

Our approach

Through experimentation and new tracking mechanisms we identified the all-important ‘why’ driving Icelandair’s happiest customers: their emphasis on high quality passenger experience. This understanding of customer motivation gave us a foundational principle around which to unify brand messaging, but how to encourage brand consistency? We focused on getting the right people from Icelandair’s regional teams and creative agencies in the right conversations to ensure ad creatives were aligned with brand standards and effectively tested. These conversations led to a whole new process for communication between Icelandair’s regional and brand teams.

An overhaul of the social media strategy and ad accounts helped us further streamline the brand, and experimentation with creative uncovered ways to engage audiences more effectively. In the Google ads account we refined ad copy, made sure search terms were correct in all relevant languages, corrected translations, and adjusted budgets, broadening awareness through a transition from programmatic to Google Display ads.

Results

With minimal budget increase, within a difficult market, we massively increased the reach and returns from Icelandair’s online presence. Between Mar and June 2024 we pulled out all the stops to deliver:

A staggering 193% increase in revenue on social ads and a 16% increase in revenue across search ads (YOY), underscoring our ability to drive meaningful business outcomes through people-powered performance marketing
Conversions raced up by 156% on social, and 22% on search (YOY)
Increased visibility and engagement: a 27% increase in impressions and 32% increase in clicks across search, plus a 67% increase in impressions and 34% increase in clicks across social.

As well as addressing some immediate issues with brand consistency and reporting, our performance marketing expertise has set the stage for ongoing improvements in Icelandair’s digital advertising. By hitching their performance marketing ride with us, we’ve been able to deliver them to a destination where they have an in-depth understanding of their customer base, enabling them to achieve greater market impact and operational efficiency.

193%

increase in revenue on paid social

Testimonials

“

“We are thrilled with our partnership with Launch and how they have helped us achieve greater results than we were anticipating in less than a year. We were expecting them to perform at a high level in terms of campaigns, but they bring so much more to the table, that benefits our goal for making Icelandair shine in the digital world. They’re also fun to work with, which is equally as important.”

JÓHANN BENEDIKTSSON – DIGITAL MARKETING MANAGER – ICELANDAIR

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