Air France's Unusual New Ad Campaign

I think Air France wants to work up their marketing and maybe get more customers. I personally have not seen La premiere, but I would love too. @Lucky, what do you think about the La Premiere and do you think it is fantastic product that would bring them some $$$

Luck, People are not smart. Google Flights for instance is a tool for miles enthusiasts like us. Not one of my friends know this tool, they just go the website of Ryan Air or Wizz Air and they will find their tickets there. Because they think: "its the cheapest". A friend of me paid 260 euro to fly Vueling from Amsterdam to Madrid. This is practically the same price you can fly Business Latam Frankfurt - Madrid with flat-bed. Same with many cheap business class fares, sometimes its cheaper to buy business than economy (or just 20$ more or so), but people don't select business class because they only look at economy since business class is "Only for ultra rich people".

I think the x-factor with the ad campaign is how French it still is (and the implied superiority): the meal patch is boeuf bourguignon and the beverage you are being reminded of with the gummy bears is champagne.

And that points to the goal of the campaign – convince people Air France is a premium offering (relative to the competition) even in economy. Savvy travelers (like yourself Lucky) will do an amenity-by-amenity comparison, but most travelers will walk away from this with the impression that Air France is a good experience (indeed, when your competition is BA and Norwegian it's hard not to measure up favorably when you're talking about the overall experience) even if that is not factually the case. Put another way, it's about building the brand (which theoretically will convert into purchases and/or higher fares further down the line) rather than changing purchasing behavior in the moment.

For whatever, the French have always been successful in marketing the perceived cache and status of all-things-French, across a variety of industries. By contrast, the Italians or British haven't been that successful. In fact, Virgin Atlantic offers a better, old-school British flying experience than the British flag-carrier, British Airways.

The problem is Air France, despite, in my opinion, having the best international first-class product of any airline, at least airlines in Western countries, the business-class experience is still inconsistent. The "new" Air France business-class is excellent, much better than Delta or even its sister airline KLM. However, Air France still hasn't installed the seats on all of its long-haul aircraft, including the flagship A380 aircraft.

Ryan, I hope you don't post this information to your millions of followers on SM. Let's just keep it here. Shhhh...

The meaning of the "love is in the air" ad is presenting the A380: you have first class, with seat 1A, the you have the girls running, representing business class, then the kinds are economy class. Got it?

Truly, they are missing a key demographic here. My mom would *LOVE* to have 50-foot sudoku to work on during her flight. I think I'd go for the champagne gummies and scratch-and-sniff boeuf. Hopefully the KLM flight we've booked to AMS next month will have these available since they're the non-French side of the company! Or maybe our return flight from CDG on AA will have them...one can always hope so, right?

“Take a Chance or Fly Air France”

I’m a huge fan of Air France. But I find this slogan quite odd in light of the fact that during the 1950’s and 60’s the airline was routinely referred to as Air Chance, due to its abysmal safety record. ( In 1962 for example, two Boeing 707’s were lost in fatal crashes within a three-week time period.) I’m quite surprised Air France management would want to go anywhere near the word ‘Chance’ in their North American advertising!

Um....Ms Wood’s Statement was clearly mainly focused on, and comparing, (AF/KLM) economy options to low-cost carrier options.

@Super VC-10 - I was going to post the exact same thing but you beat me to the punch.

Great minds...:)

I also found this very odd given I've heard it called "Air Chance" by some aviation geeks in the past, partly in reference to the AF447 crash.

Well "funny" enough, my sister was booked on AF642 from ORY to RUN this evening and the flight got canceled. Leaving tomorrow 10AM instead of 9PM this evening... She took a chance, flew Air France and.....