Due to the pandemic, Air Canada has struggled to maintain a positive emotional connection with its mass audience, losing top of mind consideration.

To remedy this, Air Canada tapped into the universally-shared experiences and emotions felt over the course of the pandemic: isolation, loneliness, living in a bubble – but also, love, resilience, and determination – to create a story of the power of love, and the power of believing during the magic of the holidays.

But with so much uncertainty around travel, we were challenged to create a story that relied on the magic of the season, while giving Air Canada a strong role and strengthening audience consideration for booking their next trip.

While the pandemic context is universally held, in Canada, its effects have been unrelenting. As the world’s second-largest country, we are already spread out during the best of times. Furthermore, our high immigrant population means many residents haven’t travelled back to see their families in over two years. Isolation is felt worldwide, but in Canada, it is especially relevant.

But the pandemic also provided other universally shared experiences and emotions for Canadians: love, resilience, and determination among them.

We used two mediums to tell our story. Through live action, we were able to ground the story in our target’s imagination, making them a part of the story. Through stop-animation, Air Canada was able to tell a big story on a small scale.

In our story, we see a young child gifted a snow globe from their mother, an Air Canada pilot. We then follow the emotional journey of two characters separated by the individual snow globes they live in. We watch our heroes meet and fall for one another before coming together through the magic of travel, and of believing.

To create the environments, we developed multiple small-scale stages for each of the key moments of the story. Whether they were meeting for the first time or daydreaming, each stage was a combination of building materials and creative problem solving to tell our story.

Over six days, we animated each shot, with each second of action taking an hour to complete. Three animators worked in different sets simultaneously, with a support team of lighting, puppet, and miniature set experts preparing the upcoming scenes. Each pose and progression were carefully planned and tested, to make sure that the characters, environments, and actions all delivered the desired emotion.

Finally, using 2D animation, we were able to apply facial reactions to depict joy, humor, embarrassment, flirtation, sadness, and, ultimately, pure happiness. Using the characters emotions to connect with the real world.

Using these techniques, we were able to create a seamless world that felt larger than life and connected and engaged with our audience.  

The result was an incredibly sweet and moving story of togetherness, hope, and love. Exactly what Canadians needed after a relentless two years of difficulty.

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Plus, the timing was perfect as 2022 saw travel restrictions start to lift – so it was a great moment for the Air Canada brand to connect and engage with its audience.

Thanks to the Globes Apart campaign, Air Canada saw significant improvements in key brand metrics among leisure travelers for the first time, including:

·       Brand I trust: +66%

·       Understands how I feel about travel: +57%

·       World-class airline: +69%

·       Airline I’d choose, even if it was more expensive: +51%