Webjet, Fiji Airways Turned to Audio Because There’s “No Better Place to Tell Stories”

Webjet and Fiji Airways’ audio investment is paying off: driving a “significant” uplift in consideration for the travel booking platform, and positioning the carrier as a world-class airline.

27-year-old Webjet underwent its biggest brand transformation in the business’ 27-year history, as it attempts to double total travel value by 2030. Three months since launch, it has observed a lift in awareness for its core product, flight bookings -- “the fact there was still room for us to grow that prompted awareness” is “really great” -- and holiday packages.

“That is an indicator that we can expect big things,” CMO Oonagh Flanagan told LBB on an episode of its Heard Mentality podcast, in partnership with Commercial Radio and Audio, “as the campaign continues and that momentum grows.”

The journey began 18 months ago, when the online travel agency business demerged from the B2B business. That prompted the realisation the brand had “underinvested” in its growth, and needed to “invest more in brand if we were going to be able to take share of voice from some of our competitors and really grow the business.”

Webjet was previously “a bit of a one trick pony” in terms of its media mix, Oonagh admitted, over-relying on paid search and bottom of the funnel activity. It turned to audio to address the challenge that awareness was strong, but consideration low.

“That requires storytelling. And there's probably no better place to tell stories, when you have the space and room, than in audio. And so that's really what led us to a mix that was much more skewed to audio than anything that we'd done in the past.

“We've really achieved our consideration goals by the incorporation of audio, because it allowed us to tell long-form stories.”

​Gayle While, CEO of Havas Host, acknowledged, “Travel is a really interesting category for audio. It's cluttered, it's price-driven, it's really, really rational. And using audio is a good DBA to break through some of that.” Agencies and brands can “forget” just “how high attention or high trust” audio is when used to its full potential.

“The rest of media is changing around us, so people are choosing to listen to things,” she said. “They're lent in.”

Her client Fiji Airways launched an end-to-end sonic experience in November as part of a brand experience overhaul designed to position the business as “a world-class airline.” Music is fundamental to Fijian culture, spirituality, and connection, but “it's mostly associated with the place, not a carrier that takes you to the place.

“There was just this great opportunity for a holistic audio moment or experience to really go end-to-end throughout their customer experience,” from check-in through to the lounge, boarding gate, and in-flight announcements.

The agency, alongside Massive Music, worked with the Pasifika Voices choir -- known for voicing ‘Moana’; the principal teacher also led the choir that worked on the ‘Lord of the Rings’ films -- to create a song sung in the iTaukei, Fijian Hindi, and English languages. Critically, the song needed to be “ownable in three seconds, in three minutes, in 10 minutes.”

“We had to make it world-class because we could've used the choir to do almost anything. Their voices are a huge instrument,” Gayle explained.

“There's just so many opportunities there for us to really have cut-through and take away the stress. Sound can bring a sense of place. Travel is stressful, whether you're scared of flying, whether you panic about whether your luggage is going to get there. So how could we use the Fijian … warmth to make people feel like they'd started their holiday before they'd even left?

“It's interesting doing it for a national carrier because there is a huge privilege in it, but also a lot of fear in it and a lot anxiety in it. And so it was one of the few projects you'll get where it was less about being on brand and more [about] capturing a spirit and an authenticity.”

​Jules Hall -- founder and CEO of The Hallway, Webjet’s agency of choice -- echoed Gayle: his brief for Webjet was to “inject joy” into its booking experience, countering the administrative burden of planning a holiday.

“The journey versus the destination is quite an interesting tension. There is joy in travel and it's a fun experience. It's the break from the norm. It is something we all look forward to. It gets quite rational though, the conversation of booking a flight, booking a hotel. I, for one, love going on holiday. I don't necessarily love the process of having to think about a holiday.”

The agency landed on a new platform idea, ‘Go Somewhere’, brought to life with striking art direction and talking suitcases – shot in stop-motion on bespoke sets. Jules said the voiceover recordings were plentiful, to get the voices exactly right.

“But that's what makes it magic. And in the world we live in, where there's a lot of fast content, there's a lot of cost pressure, there's lots of speed pressure, there is still time and there are still ways to inject the craft within the budget constraints that we all have to work within.

“We had an ambition in the brand purpose to bring joy back into travel. That's what the suitcases enable us to do. It's such an easy visual metaphor. It gave us the opportunity to inject personality, to show what Webjet stands for, cares about, how it feels, put an emotional layer into the brand that you can connect with, that isn't always there when you're just selecting flights and prices and destinations.”

Oonagh confirmed the brand will play with the existing voices -- and introduce new characters -- and lamented “we definitely don’t talk about” the impact sonic branding has on the efficacy of all creative executions. Jules agreed, noting The Hallway built an audio-specific comms strategy for the campaign, spanning podcast partnerships and radio ads, live reads and retail executions.

“How does a brand show up from an audio perspective? It's something I don't think we think about quite enough as an industry,” he said.

“When you land on something that is distinct, is ownable, is memorable, it's really, really powerful.

“You've got to really understand where it fits in because you can't just make a sound. The sound's got to bring your positioning to life in the right way. So make sure you've got clarity at a strategy level, then you've got the creative canvas to work with.”

Oonagh warned against getting “lazy” and falling into the “trap” of relying on personal preference versus audience preference. “That's why we need to listen to experts and think about strategy and make sure that the mix is right for who it is that we're trying to influence.”

Audiences expect to be respected, though; the creative has to be fit-for-channel and worth their time. Jules explained there’s an “incumbency on us as brand marketers to make sure that the content we do give people in that moment is of the right quality.

“Don't betray the trust they've given us, don't betray that time they've allowed us to be with them in that really intimate context.”

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Heard Mentality is a podcast series brought to you by CRA and LBB. You can listen to the episode with Oonagh, Jules, and Gayle right here.

Want the latest in Australian radio and audio? Join us live at Heard, February 18 in Sydney.

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