Airline and aviation marketing
Every seat on tomorrow's schedule is worth nothing the moment the door closes, which makes marketing a yield function before it is a brand function.
Where the money moves.
Inventory expires daily and the schedule is fixed months out, so a quarterly campaign calendar is the wrong instrument. Marketing has to sit next to revenue management and read the same numbers: load by sector and departure date, booking curve against the same week last year, fare mix, the sectors quietly running soft. Media weight then moves to where the risk actually is. Leisure books late and responds to price, corporate books close-in and responds to schedule and frequency, and visiting friends and relatives traffic moves around school holidays and cultural calendars.
Route launches carry their own discipline. Slot constraints at Sydney, the curfew and the movement cap, IATA schedule seasons, and the simple fact that a new sector needs demand generated in two markets at once. The origin campaign is the easy half. The destination side usually decides whether the route survives its first year, and it is where tourism body and airport marketing support can be unlocked if the plan is built to attract it. That work starts long before the schedule loads.
Distribution cost is a marketing decision disguised as a technology one. Every booking arriving through an intermediary carries a margin, so direct share, brand search coverage, metasearch economics and the NDC content advantage all belong in the same conversation as fare strategy. Loyalty sits underneath all of it as the cheapest inventory you own, provided the lifecycle programme is built on flown behaviour and status progression rather than a monthly newsletter posing as a CRM programme.
Reporting is written in your commercial language. Load factor and revenue per available seat kilometre by route, direct booking share, cost per booking by channel, ancillary attach rate and loyalty member revenue. Across the Ignis portfolio, paid media returns an average of 20x on ad spend, and the discipline that produces it is the same one applied here: spend follows the sector that needs filling. Accounts, pixels, data and creative are registered to the airline from the first week, and the whole programme runs from one in-house team.
What we run.
Yield linked demand generation
Media budget allocated against load and booking curve data rather than a calendar, with sector level bidding so the flights carrying risk get the weight. Reviewed on the same cadence as revenue management, not once a quarter.
Route launch programme
Origin and destination campaigns built as one plan, structured to attract tourism body and airport marketing support, with trade, corporate and consumer streams timed against schedule load, first bookable date and the opening seasons.
Direct booking and distribution
Brand search coverage, metasearch economics, the booking flow itself and the NDC content advantage, worked as a single programme aimed at moving margin out of intermediated channels and into the direct path.
Loyalty and lifecycle CRM
Segmentation on flown behaviour, status progression and route affinity rather than broadcast sends. Reactivation of lapsed members, status run prompts, partner earn campaigns and ancillary attach messaging timed to the booking window.
Irregular operations communications
Automatic pausing of paid activity on affected routes, service messaging that takes priority over promotional sends, prepared statements and a spokesperson brief, all built to the standard the incoming customer rights framework will hold you to.
Questions we get asked.
Demand, aimed at the sectors the system says are missing it. Revenue management can price a soft sector but cannot create passengers for it. When marketing sees the same load and curve data, weight shifts to the routes and dates carrying the risk, and fare integrity holds because you are filling seats instead of discounting them.
Yes, and most route economics depend on it. A new sector needs demand in both directions, which means a real campaign in the destination market as well as the origin. We build the plan that unlocks tourism board and airport marketing support, then run both sides as one programme rather than two disconnected efforts.
By not pretending it is not happening. Paid activity pauses against affected routes automatically, service communications take priority over promotional messaging, and customer statements are written to the standard the incoming aviation customer rights charter and ombuds scheme will expect. Trust recovers faster when the operational message and the brand message are the same message.
The logic holds and the channels change. A FIFO contract is won on safety record, on time performance and resource sector relationships, so the work resembles a tender programme more than a consumer campaign. Regional passenger routes lean on local media, community presence and search, because the catchment is finite and largely known.
Also in transport and logistics
Talk to us.
9 services under one team, run against the numbers your business already reports on.
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