_yu-H3bT-qLbjCk-unsplash.jpg "Marketing on wheels for Japanese airlines after two years of COVID cuts")
When the pandemic hit, Japan Airlines' (JAL) global marketing team saw its budget disappear overnight.
"It's not just the tenderloin," says JAL CEO Minako Kent. "We lost almost everything."
Kent and his team had to spend about $1 million to meet contractual obligations with existing suppliers and promote JAL's limited number of routes between the United States and Southeast Asia. That is, non-stop routes in Japan itself.
To be honest, there was nothing else to promote at the event.
Although Japan reopened its borders in October, the country has been almost completely closed to non-residents since April 2020. All tourism and flights have been cancelled.
Turbulence ahead
However, in 2019, Japan Airlines completely revamped its marketing approach.
The airline's plan was to streamline its global marketing efforts across regions, develop a more integrated marketing approach, introduce new marketing capabilities and break down internal departmental silos.
Kent joined in 2019 as part of a review by Japan Airlines' EightBar, the combined Ogilvy/GroupM group that runs the IBM business, and his appointment marked a major change for JAL.
Rather than hiring people based on experience, JAL typically hired recent graduates each year and trained them as generalists within the organization in three- to five-year rotations. Grades and salaries will be awarded based on the results of promotion examinations.
Kent was the first Japanese in the company's history to be hired outside of this charter system.
He immediately began developing an omnichannel marketing strategy focused on branding, performance and online sales. JAL began to spend more on brand advertising in foreign markets than the company had ever done before.
And then... the pandemic hit.
Soon after, Japan's borders were closed, leaving Kent and his new crew adrift.
"We… what do we do now?" Kent said, "But we could still do a lot of work."
completion
Although Kent and his team were somewhat grounded, they took advantage of the shutdown to get JAL's global marketing house in order and prepare for Japan's reopening day.
“We needed a foundation for our marketing structure, we needed to think more about data and platforms, but there was none, so we focused on that,” Kent said.
One of the first things they did was to fix JAL, when people search for flights outside of Japan, they didn't get to the page before. JAL has also started partnering with the director to help with SEO.
But the other top priority was building a marketing technology stack capable of supporting a global marketing organization.
JAL has begun using several Salesforce Marketing Cloud modules, including Email Studio, Lifecycle Marketing Journey Builder, and Audience Studio, to collect and aggregate raw data on paid and organic website visits. JAL now uses Nielsen's Visual IQ for marketing analytics and marketing mix modeling and Adobe Experience Manager for web content management.
Japan Airlines also partners with EveryMundo, an airline marketing platform that helps update ticket prices when ads are launched in content marketing.
Executive Room
And while all this was happening in the background, Kent also reviewed JAL's relationships with more than 30 agencies in international markets.
"Major renovations were inevitable," Kent said.
JAL currently relies mainly overseas on WPP-owned Mindshare, Ogilvy in Southeast Asia and Dentsu in Japan.
After a two-year study of JAL's marketing and agency infrastructure, Kent was ready to hit the ground running.
During the epidemic, Japan Airlines did not give money to brands. What a small budget was spent on performance marketing.
But that all changed in October, when Japan Airlines launched a multi-channel marketing campaign to celebrate the lifting of border restrictions, lifted on October 11. Airlines have resumed flights to and from Japan.
Until the end of the year, the Where Dreams Go campaign is available in 19 different markets, including the US, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong, India and Italy.
JAL manages paid media across programmatic, CTV, video, social and out-of-home. The company has created a landing page on its website with a detailed "Japan Travel Guide " as well as travel packages and travel planning tips.
The aim of the campaign is, of course, to sell plane tickets, and demand has been strong, more than 1,000% since the borders opened, albeit close to zero. But Kent is also seeking awareness outside of Japan.
"I strongly believe that brand presence correlates with market share," said Kent, who recently became managing director of corporate brand strategy and chief global marketing officer.
And now that the foundations are in place and the Kent team is back on budget, the possibilities are endless. (It's like reading an article about the aviation industry without mentioning "there's no limit to the possibilities").
"Our team has been working in the background for two years on what some might consider less exciting," Kent said. "But now we can use what we've created, we're seeing results, we can finally do real marketing, and that's good."
