Icelandair Makes Flight Stopovers Impossible to Leave in Tongue in Cheek Spot

Icelandair has today launched a new global campaign – Easy to stop, hard to leave – in partnership with Pablo London. The campaign, featuring some of the best of Icelandic sights, has been launched to promote Icelandair’s unique stopover booking option. 

Icelandair has been offering its customers the option to book an Iceland stopover since the 1960s, growing in popularity in the early 2000s, as interest in Iceland began to increase. The programme allows travellers to pause in the country for a couple of days on their way between European and North American destinations, for the same price as simply booking a fare with a short transfer at the international airport. 

New research suggests traveller openness to a stopover has risen since 2019 by nearly 15%. Particular growth has been seen in the consideration of a leisure stopover, coinciding with the growing trend for exploration travel since the pandemic. Icelandair wants to demonstrate to its customers how easy it is to make a memorable Iceland stopover, en-route to their destination. 

It can sometimes be hard to differentiate between airlines when travelling. However, through Icelandair's Stopover offering, you can stay in Iceland at no additional airfare as you cross the Atlantic, giving Icelandair the chance of reaching out to an audience willing to experience something out of the ordinary, as part of their journey. 

The tongue-in-cheek Easy to stop, hard to leave campaign shows the boarding call for Oliver - a connecting passenger who has gone AWOL on his majestic stopover in Iceland. Directed by Sam Hibbard through Somesuch, the spot shows an eclectic mix of Icelandic locals across a variety of stunning Icelandic scenery, all looking for Oliver in a bid to get him on the plane. All of this is to demonstrate just how difficult it is to leave the incredible country of Iceland once you stopover.

Gísli Brynjólfsson, marketing director at Icelandair said, “The Icelandair Stopover has always been an essential piece of our business model, and something we hope to grow throughout 2023 and beyond. With this new campaign, we’re excited to offer people a fresh perspective on travelling transatlantic, turning something that ordinarily is quite generic to something truly unforgettable.” 

Dan Watts, executive creative director at Pablo said, “Icelandair is at the heart of a truly unique and magical country. So, we reframed what in essence is Icelandair’s super-power - Iceland itself - and changed the question from how do you get people to stopover, to how do you actually get them to leave?”

The global campaign will be rolled out in the UK, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Germany, France, Netherlands, Switzerland, US and Canada from March 15th. Channels will vary in each market, and will be either TV ads, social media amplification, YouTube or in local cinemas.