• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer, 4 hours ago

It has been a difficult time for airlines, as headlines about delays, safety and system meltdowns make traditional contextual targeting risky. But for United Airlines, changes in the way the company highlights innovations have emerged.

“We took a turn with the team to make sure to be more proactive,” says Brittany Clauss, director of brand marketing and media strategy at United Airlines. “Many airlines zigged when we zagged. We took the moment to redefine who we are as a brand.”

United Airlines worked with its agency Carat USA, which tapped AI technology from Sightly, an AI-powered platform focused on real-time data, to surface real-time data and raise awareness of the airline's focus on customer values. What the company found in the data was very useful.

News cycles move fast -- sometimes faster than brands and their agency partners can capitalize on.

When a competitor quietly raised its baggage fees, consumers were not happy, but United identified the unique moment and presented a unique approach.

Clauss said United’s brand marketing team is structured in a way that it can “move at the speed of PR,” and it became an interesting opportunity to put the strategy into practice within paid media.

The Good Leads The Way campaign ran on all types of media, from out-of-home (OOH) to connected TV (CTV), but the awareness part ran on social and other paid media platforms.

Brooke Bowhay, vice president of planning and activation at Carat USA, said for social and digital ad targeting, Carat worked with Sightly to deploy a cross-platform media strategy across YouTube, TikTok, and Programmatic online video.

Sightly, which helps brands connect with culturally relevant moments, enabled Carat and United to focus on online digital. This part of the campaign focused on raising awareness and helped to quickly identify the correct moment to run the ad or reach out to consumers.

The social digital campaign generated 3x higher click-through rates (CTR) on TikTok, 20% lift in engagement vs. United’s typical campaign, and more than a 10-point lift in video completion rates (VCRs) on matched programmatic inventory to average a 69% VCR rate across matched inventory.