CHALLENGE: Air New Zealand pretty much views the Lord of the Rings
movies as a gift from the gods.

Normally the airline's US marketing department has to compete with
the likes of Qantas for those long-vacation discretionary dollar
spenders. And let's just say Qantas has deeper pockets.

"One ad sales rep got put in the middle of the two of us, fighting
over placement," remembers Dina Louie, Air New Zealand USA Internet
Manager. Louie has to watch every penny, so Quantas won.

But Air New Zealand was able to make the most of what US media they
could afford in print and online by featuring Lord of the
Rings-related creative with the headline, "The movie is fictional.

The location isn't. Middle Earth is New Zealand." (Link to samples
below.)

Running during vacation-shopping months since November 2002 on
carefully tested national sites, the online ads had a remarkably
high .86% conversion rate -- that's the percent of clicks who anted
up for a plane ticket costing just under $1000.

Louie delightedly planned her 2004 online campaigns to be more of
the same. Then early on Monday January 26th, she was pulled into an
emergency marketing meeting. The airline was taking over United's
old slot in San Francisco International Airport, and HQ thought it
would be a great idea to get the word out with a special 14-day
ticket sale for the SF area.

Could Louie please whip up a quick online marketing campaign
focusing on SF ... to launch the next Monday? Also, could she make
sure it was very high-impact so the first flights out of SF would be
sell-outs after just two weeks of online promotion?

Last but not least, she couldn't use the proven Middle Earth
creative because it didn't have a time-dated call to action, or a SF
regional focus.

CAMPAIGN: First Louie got on the phone with all of her media reps --
could they switch some of her planned inventory buys to early
February; could they do geotargeting for SF; and, exactly which ad
units were available on that basis??

"We were scrambling," she says. "We made the buys in probably a day
and a half."

She deliberately chose to go with geotargeting on national sites
rather than focusing heavily on locals because she'd already tested
the nationals and knew exactly how well their audience worked for
her. She needed a sure thing for this campaign.

Plus, she's suspicious of relying on non-tested local sites. "I
worked in radio before I came here. I knew what the radio account
people said about sites. It was always based on ratings ... it was
hard to trust. It's hard to say how well they market the site."
That said, she knew she absolutely had to run on SFGate, the site
for San Francisco's largest newspaper. She couldn't afford a
direct buy, and there was very little time, so she went with an
online ad network (an aggregator selling remaindered space) who
guaranteed that SFGate would be one of the sites they placed her on.

Once Louie had a list of ad units, she handed them to the creative
team to get some banners made. She didn't have extra funds for
creative, so she asked them to give it their best shot, creating
just two ads per unit -- one a revolving gif and one rich media
Flash-version. (Link to samples below.)

Unlike the Middle Earth campaign, these ads were extremely down 'n'
dirty. There were no gorgeous photos, no fancy design, and very
little copy -- just a price, a deadline, and a click button.

Louie flung up a landing page to match, and also altered the US
site's home page so the offer rode front and center in the hero-spot
for that two week period. This, she hoped, would convert any
view-throughs who saw the ads but didn't click directly.

Lastly, she zapped out an eblast featuring matching direct response
creative to her house list.

RESULTS: "Sales were our best ever that month," says Louie. "We
almost doubled online sales. We were blown away -- this was a
blast!" However she notes that the San Francisco campaign probably
would not have been as successful if it hadn't fallen into ground
already fertilized by the long-term Middle Earth campaign, which
does an outstanding job of branding New Zealand as a destination.
On average the San Francisco online ads got a .07% click rate and a
.8% conversion. Ads placed in boxes in center of a site's content
tended to perform better than those on the edges. (That CNET Box
format keeps on ticking....)

Louie notes that while lower-cost ad network buy performed "about
the same" as direct buys, "It gave me a bitter taste in my mouth
because we lacked control. It's not to say it wasn't effective, we
did make sales. But, the reporting's all coded so you don't know
which sites are doing what." (Which, from the point of view of the
aggregator, makes perfect sense. Why should they want you to go
direct?)

Also, the rich media ads didn't always perform better than the
standard revolving gifs.

Why? Louie says she's learned a lesson about rich media, "Sometimes
the standard gif pulled better because you can't do as much
animation. The message was more static. If rich media's in a content
ad, it may load and start to play but people won't see it until they
get to the part where the ad is. They miss the beginning, and the
message didn't necessarily make sense if you didn't see it from the
beginning.

"So, rich media isn't necessarily better, it's all down to how you
manage your creative."

MarketingSherpa's heard from other online advertisers with the same
problem. One suggestion we've heard is to time your rich media to
start a couple of seconds after the page load begins. The site often
allows you only a 10-second run time, so your ad will just run eight
seconds. But eight seconds of high-impact is better than 10-seconds
of confusion.

Also, perhaps very direct response-oriented ads work better
sometimes with less fancy creative. You're cutting to the chase with
your offer. No distractions....

Useful links related to this article:
Samples of Middle Earth and SF campaigns:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/anz/ad.html
Plexus M/2 Inc - the US-based agency who did the SF campaign
creative quickly and on a tight budget:
http://www.plexusm2.com
Colenso BBDO, the New Zealand-based agency who did the Middle Earth
online ads
http://www.colensobbdo.co.nz
Air New Zealand US
http://www.airnewzealand.com