Airport stars – How to effectively activate prominent athletes to establish a solid base of long-term brand ambassadors

In December 2018, Fraport Slovenija offered a celebrity-style experience to the passengers in Ljubljana Airport. The company paired up with cartoonist Boris Oblak to create unique caricatures of the passengers in the terminal. The effort was a part of the Airport stars communication campaign designed to celebrate a record year, raise awareness of new flights and showcase a comfortable, almost celebrity-like passenger experience.

iPROM worked with the client to identify the moment of basketball fever and shift the Airport stars campaign to digital channels. Our strategy was clear – reward the loyal passengers without whom 2018 would not have been as successful, create an attractive prize contest with unique caricatures and relate it to basketball stars Luka Dončić and Goran Dragić.

Soon afterwards, Ljubljana Airport Facebook profile posted a prize contest that invited followers to try their luck and win the main prize: a trip to one of the most anticipated sporting events of the year – an NBA match that would pit Luka Dončić (Dallas Mavericks) and Goran Dragić (Miami Heat) against each other for the first time.

We supported the campaign with editorial posts on Facebook whose reach was extended with advertising and strengthened through Instagram presence using the Instagram Story format. High user engagement with posts resulted in immediate broad organic reach which enabled us to optimize the campaign ROI.

Another campaign goal was to use the campaign to receive consents from prize contest participants permitting us to send them e-mails about new products and offerings from Ljubljana airport. Consents were provided by 58% of all prize contest participants using a fully GDPR-compliant form.

A comprehensive approach, attractive content and accurately targeted advertising across social networks culminated in above average results that were achieved during a very short period.

User reach	230,000
Number of votes	9,408
Number of participants (unique users)	7,876
Number of consents for e-mail marketing	4,554
Share of participants providing consent for e-mail marketing	58%

“One of the things that I am the most excited about in my work is activation on social media. The support I receive from iPROM’s social media management team plays a key role in this process. During the Airport stars campaign they have proven themselves again with a creative approach to digital communication campaign design and excellent execution. The result was one of the most successful activation campaigns of Letališče Ljubljana on Facebook so far,” said Monika Jelačič, communication specialist, Fraport Slovenija.