Emirates takes motorists places with new street pole kiosk campaign

If you're cruising down a street and see the Statue of Liberty or the Eiffel Tower in the middle of the road, don't be too surprised. That's Emirates' new outdoor campaign.

The campaign consists of street poles converted into historical monuments, landmarks and signs, representing the different countries that the airline flies to from India.

Creative agency, Ogilvy came up with this idea, when they were asked to develop creatives for kiosks across Mumbai. The campaign was executed by Navia Asia, the outdoor division of Starcom.

The idea was to do something different and clutter-breaking, as the usual text-only kiosks to communicate Emirates' frequency to key destinations had become passé.

Thus, backlit cut-outs of landmarks, symbols and monuments of different countries were mounted on street pole kiosks. These include starfish on a beach representing Mauritius, an English guard intact with his bearskin cap to symbolize London, the trams of San Francisco and a giraffe to represent wildlife in Johannesburg. Along with the symbol, messages regarding the frequency of Emirates' flights to that specific country have also been mentioned.

The agency managed to give maximum exposure to 15 destinations across two stretches in Mumbai -- Worli and Juhu. They used 20 pole kiosks for this purpose.

The creative rationale was to show iconic elements, which are representative of the key destinations. As a result, even if the viewer is not able to read the frequency of flights while passing by, the iconic element and the bold logo still reinforce the brand and its worldwide network.

To begin communicating key destinations for this year's winter holidays, Emirates has so far used only outdoor in India. This includes bus shelters, hoardings, gantries and centre medians (kiosks on street poles).

For Emirates, pole kiosks made sense, because unlike billboards, there is an opportunity to flag off multiple destinations and strengthen the branding for a longer period of time.

Shilpa Talreja, advertising manager, Emirates India, says, "For a media opportunity like kiosks, innovation was an imperative. And the creative idea and execution allowed us to do just that. The creative was also a great fit with our strategy, because it allowed us to communicate our extensive network in Europe, America and Africa through multiple executions."

In India, Emirates operates out of 10 bases. So far, outdoor elements have been rolled out across all of them, on the basis of the requirements of each station. However, the innovative kiosks have been executed only in Mumbai, while similar messaging in a text-only format has been executed in Hyderabad and Chennai.