How Heathrow Connected Its Flight Paths to African Scenery
Creative agency St. Luke’s has once again partnered with the most connected airport in the UK - Heathrow - to depict its connectivity through incredible visuals. After the skiing holiday iteration, the creative teams from the brand and agency sides have decided to focus on African destinations by drawing a visual parallel between them and aeroplane flight paths.
With Wavemaker on the media side of things, both St. Luke’s and Heathrow agreed that OOH is the perfect medium for the campaign, showcasing the precision and simplicity behind the flight paths’ streamlined symmetry. After being provided with a list of accessible destinations from Heathrow, St. Luke’s got to work with artist Richard Green, to create the striking campaign visuals through a mix of CGI and stock imagery. The billboards and print images showcase Cape Town through the tracks of people strolling down Boulder Beach, Nairobi and Johannesburg through two offroad vehicles carving out the flight path, and more.
LBB’s Zoe Antonov spoke to St. Luke’s chief creative officer Richard Denney to find out more about the importance of minimalism in the campaign and why CGI was the best approach.
LBB> What was the brief for this campaign and how did the ideation process go?
Richard> The latest destinations focused work, centering on Africa is the second iteration of the destination brief we had from Heathrow. The initial brief was to come up with a creative platform which would showcase the breadth of destinations you can fly to directly from Heathrow. This platform would need to flex across different destinations around the globe throughout the year.
Our creative team Leah and Rhianna came up with the idea which uses destination-based visuals to mimic the simple, streamlined nature of flight paths. We checked it worked over a few destinations and then set to work on how we would bring these flight paths to life in a way that would connect and inspire our audience. The number of visual twists mimicking the flight paths are endless, meaning that this campaign can really stand the test of time and continue to inspire and delight. We presented it to Heathrow and they loved it as much as we did.
LBB> Tell me about the campaign preceding this one - where you found the same beauty in skiing. Why did you decide to continue in the same vein and what was the success rate before?
Richard> Since the first execution was for skiing, it allowed us to demonstrate this simple idea across a number of destinations and media formats including D6 sites where we could use live action of a snowboarder and show them snowboarding from one point to another. The power of its simplicity and stress testing against a number of other possible destinations meant it was the perfect visual approach for a long term platform, rather than just a one off campaign. Results showed that this approach was a success thanks to the idea’s simplicity and visual impact, so we were confident in its continuation for the second iteration of the campaign. We even saw one comment online from a fan of the work saying it felt like ASMR for the eyes.
LBB> How does the simplicity of the campaign resonate with the client and why was minimalism the best way to approach this?
Richard> Heathrow loved this approach from our first creative presentation! They understood that it was the simplicity that really allowed us to have that kind of impact, while showing the breadth of destinations and promoting the destinations themselves. The campaign’s minimalism ensured the creative was as single minded as possible.
LBB> Why did you choose OOH for this campaign and what are the benefits of it over TVCs or any other format?
Richard> We worked with Wavemaker on this, and both agreed that out of home was the right channel for this work. It allowed us to have the biggest impact visually while a number of formats allows us to show different executions. What could be more attention-grabbing than aspirational creative showing you the places you can fly to directly from the UK’s most connected airport?
LBB> Tell me about the art used in the campaign - was it digitally made and what made the artist behind it the perfect one for the project? Were you after geographical accuracy or was it more an artistic approach?
Richard> Obviously due to the number of destinations we needed to cover there just wasn't the budget to go on shoots to capture all of this. Also, the majority of the shots are from the air looking down and so even if we did want to shoot, airspace regulations would be a real nightmare sending drones up to capture our shots. So we ended up using a mixture of stock photography and incredible retouching and CGI effects from the magnificent Richard Green.
For the ski campaign, it was Richard who took photos of white flour being thrown into the air which was then used for some of the snow spray from our skiers. Due to the nature of the idea, we wanted to ensure that the flight paths were as true to form as possible. We worked out the exact layouts we wanted before going into production with amazing skills from our head of art and design Pete Mould. We then spent hours looking through hundreds of stock imagery to build out complex shots. Safari, for example, is a mixture of CGI model making with our Land Rovers, and various different stock shots used to recreate the exact destination’s genuine landscape.
LBB> How did you come up with the artistic direction of the images and what made these choices the perfect ones?
Richard> As part of the Africa brief, Heathrow listed out key destinations and we then researched attractions and activities in these destinations. This helped inform the executions to make sure they were relevant to the destinations we were showcasing, whilst being visually arresting and aspirational.
LBB> How did you choose where the campaign would be shown in terms of location and which media? What research went into that?
Richard> We partnered with Wavemaker for the media. Their plan allowed for DOOH which is a great awareness driving channel, allowing the creative to be in contextually relevant locations where we were able to dynamically target our audience.
As for print, this was born out of how impactful the creative is in this space. The channel also allowed us to target locations in London and the South East, with high impact formats in contextually relevant travel sections of both the Evening Standard and Metro.
Luxury magazines placements for Africa again allow the creative to be in contextually relevant places where the target audience is found.
