Films are a beautiful and impactful way of storytelling: Shalini Rao, CMO, BIAL

Bengaluru Airport recently launched a digital marketing campaign – #TimetoReconnect, which focuses on reassuring passengers about safe airport experiences and encourages people to travel and reconnect with their loved ones. Through this campaign, BLR Airport aims to encourage people to reconnect with their friends, family, or even their personal self and at the same time be reassured of a safe airport environment. The campaign is aimed at everyone who opts to travel through the BLR Airport. At the heart of the campaign are three well-narrated short digital films, which focus on various aspects of airport operations, including vaccinated staff, contactless payments, and contactless travel and finally giving those reassurances to the travellers to travel safely. Through the use of social media platforms, BLR Airport will reach out their audiences with the nicely narrated impactful films and reassure them.

In an exclusive conversation with Adgully, Shalini Rao, Chief Marketing Officer, Bangalore International Airport Ltd (BIAL), elaborates on the entire purpose of this campaign and how they plan to educate and communicate with travellers, as well as the power of storytelling in challenging times.

The pandemic had halted travel completely. What were the challenges that you faced once the government granted permissions with a lot of restrictions to allow travellers to travel with strict protocols?

In May 2020, when we resumed scheduled domestic flight operations, there were a set of guidelines by GoI and GoK that we had to adhere to. The changing travel guidelines and new norms of flying were confusing to the passengers at the start, but we ensured that our staff members helped and guided passengers every step of the way. We started a campaign titled #WeAreHereForYou, where we continuously shared videos, FAQs, travel regulations to educate and guide passengers on-ground and on the digital space.

The entire airport ecosystem, involving airlines, security teams, concessionaires, came together to assure passengers about a safe airport experience at the Bangalore Airport. To enable a healthy airport experience, we introduced a contactless journey from parking to boarding at BLR Airport in May 2020. The technology enabled minimum surface contact and minimum exposure between passengers and airport personnel. Advanced digital thermal screening for passengers and staff, RTPCR testing facilities on campus and stringent protocols for contact tracing, quarantine and isolation followed its due course.

We also had stringent sanitisation protocols in place to ensure the highest standards of hygiene within the Airport premises. From sanitisation to fumigation, we ensured our safety measures were executed round-the-clock. Today, we have over 700 hand sanitising points within the Terminal.

What’s the objective of the campaign  #TimetoReconnect, which you have created to reassure the travellers?

As we slowly move away from virtual connect to human connect, we have observed that people are now waiting to travel again, but safety is on everyone’s mind. The #TimetoReconnect campaign focuses on reassuring passengers about safe airport experiences, vaccinated staff and encourages them to travel and reconnect with their loved ones. Since the pandemic began, people are missing the social interactions and connections they used to enjoy in the past. These include, connecting with their loved ones, impromptu getaways, pre-flight food indulgences, gift shopping and mini splurges. Through this campaign, BLR Airport aims to encourage people to reconnect with their friends, family, or even their personal self and at the same time be reassured of a safe airport environment. The campaign is aimed at everyone who opts to travel through BLR Airport (arrival or departure).

What’s the end objective of the campaign and how do you plan to measure the effectiveness of the campaign?

As an airport, we have always believed in bringing people closer together, but the pandemic had restricted this social interaction. During the festive season, we observed our passenger traffic increase, it was time for all of us to reconnect with our loved ones, embark on new journeys, fulfil our travel bucket list while being cautious and safe about our personal wellbeing. At the heart of the campaign are three short digital films (two of which are live on our Social Media channels), which focus on various aspects of airport operations, including vaccinated staff, contactless payments, and contactless travel. As an extension of the campaign, we launched a contest asking people who do they want to Reconnect with and why. Five lucky winners would win return flight tickets to any destination of their choice on the AirAsia India network.

The goals we had aimed at the start of the campaign was to encourage people to travel again, ensure more passengers travel through the airport with an increased confidence in air travel as the safest mode of transportation during the pandemic. We have seen that in the growth trajectory of passenger numbers in the last one month, since the advent of the festive season, vis-a-vis the dull period between March and June owing to the second wave of COVID-19.

Our purpose was also to remind people about the little things they enjoyed about travel; something they had stopped/ restricted doing due to the pandemic, thereby bringing an element of nostalgia – for example: grabbing a bite of their favourite idli-vada before boarding, relishing their favourite filter coffee at the airport, indulging in some retail therapy before their holiday, seeing familiar faces at the airport or making new friends on the journey.

Our first two films have gone live and cumulatively crossed 6 million views across YouTube and all our social media channels. The third film is expected to go live in December, before the year-end holidays. The Reconnect contest witnessed participation from over 15,000 passengers and social media users during the one-month long contest period.

What kind of protocols is the airport following to ensure social distancing and contactless travel? How are the airlines supporting and collaborating well with the airport authorities?

Driven by a customer-centric mindset, we have ensured that stringent measures are in place at every passenger touch point to make air travel as safe as possible during the pandemic. BLR Airport introduced contactless travel from parking to boarding, contactless payment options at all the stores and continued sanitisation of facilities, round-the-clock. To safeguard the health and well-being of passengers, majority of frontline staff at the airport are vaccinated and follow COVID-19 appropriate behaviour. We had organised vaccination camps in partnership with the Government of Karnataka and various hospitals in the city to ensure employees working in the Airport campus were vaccinated. Heightened safety, hygiene measures and vaccinated frontline workers ensure safe and positive experiences for passengers, during the pandemic and beyond. The airlines have supported us throughout the journey in our fight against COVID-19. Airlines ensured that passengers were masked up, wore face shields and PPE kits, as per guidelines of GoI.

Travel business needs continuous engagement with your loyal customers. What kind of strategy have you planned to stay engaged with your audience?

Being in the service industry, customer engagement is of paramount importance to us – both on-ground and online. To continue the engagement with our passengers, visitors, and online followers, we run various campaigns through the year. This involves commercial driven campaigns and activations on deals, discounts, and sales at stores. The communication for all the on-ground activations is taken online on our digital mediums as well to create awareness. On online platforms, we run contests, videos, quiz, games, etc. to continue engagement with our followers.

Engaging content is critical for the success of any brand. Knowing your target audience is essential to creating tailored marketing campaigns and successfully engaging customers through social media. Last year, during COVID-19 we launched a FAQ series on our website and social media channels to keep our follower base updated about the latest travel guidelines. Over a period, the FAQ page became the most visited webpage on our website and our FAQ posts on social media gathered an average engagement rate of over 10% owing to all the queries. Depending on the scenario, the brand communication strategy must evolve to continue the engagement with the audience.

How do you plan to leverage digital films on social media? What’s going to be your social media channels?

BLR Airport has presence on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. We always use our social media platforms to narrate our stories and we believe films are a beautiful and impactful way of storytelling. The contactless journey film launched by us last year managed to gather over 6.5 million views across all SM platforms. All our key milestones such as opening of new runway, international connectivity, sanitisation procedures, or new product/ service launch at the Terminal, are captured primarily through films. You can view the latest films of #TimetoReonnect campaign here – Kempegowda International Airport Bengaluru - YouTube. The films are aimed at reminding them of little moments of indulgence and interaction that used to take place when they travelled through the airport regularly.

Will you look at mass media in some markets in the South?

We are unlikely to look at mass media at this stage, but we could revisit that going forward. A lot of it will also depend on how passenger volume and business pick up over a period of time in the current COVID-19 scenario.