Star Alliance Gold Status Members Take Centre Stage in Marketing Campaigns

Star Alliance and its member carriers will feature a line-up of Gold Status frequent travellers in their joint marketing activities in 2016.

In total, five member carriers are planning to run campaigns during the course of this year.

Mark Davies, Director Loyalty and Marketing at Star Alliance said, “We have been using genuine international travellers in various campaigns for a number of years now. Originally the concept was largely part of our marketing campaigns for welcoming new member airlines to the alliance. In 2015, we then used the same concept to support our member carriers with individualised campaigns, underscoring the global Star Alliance brand message. Building on the positive feedback received, we will continue this concept during the current year.”

The first member airline to roll out its bespoke campaign in 2016 will be Turkish Airlines, featuring free-diving world record holder Şahika Ercümen.

Şahika regularly travels to beautiful and exotic locations to participate in free-diving competitions and training camps, as well as to cities where she lectures on her sport, health and nutrition. Şahika began her career in 1998 and has since won over 100 medals and awards. She currently holds six world records in different free-diving categories.

Her free-diving provided for a very exciting and stunning under water production for the campaign film, which illustrates the number of countries served by Turkish Airlines and the Star Alliance network.

The campaign featuring Ercümen will be broadcast across various Turkish Airlines and Star Alliance media channels from now until early March.

In parallel, EVA Air’s bespoke campaign, which launched in December 2015, will continue to run across the airline’s own as well as the alliance’s marketing communication channels through the end of January 2016.

It features Taiwanese dancer Fang-Yi Sheu who has had a very prestigious career in dancing and is the founder of LAFA & Artists Dance Company. In addition she has been the principle dancer at the Martha Graham Dance Company in New York.

For the campaign she brought the Star Alliance network to life through a special dance, which was especially choreographed for the film. Special lighting and photographic techniques were used during the production to capture Fang-Yi Sheu’s incredible artistic movements.

Another campaign which has been running since December 2015 is the Croatia Airlines bespoke, featuring world-renowned pianist Maksim Mrvica, who plays classical crossover music.

He has released several critically acclaimed albums and holds the world record for playing Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee” faster than anyone else. In fact, there is even a competition named after him, in which people try to play the piece quicker than he does, but no one has yet succeeded.

For the campaign, Maksim performed his signature piece (Flight of the Bumblebee) to show how Croatia Airlines and Star Alliance help him travel the world to perform for his audiences. The campaign will be running through the end of January 2016 across Croatia Airlines’ and Star Alliance’s diverse marketing communication channels.

Şahika, Maksim and Fan-Yi Sheu are elite level customers in the respective Frequent Flyer Programmes of Turkish Airlines (Miles & Smiles), Croatia Airlines (Miles & More) EVA Air (Infinity Mileagelands) and thereby also hold Star Alliance Gold Status.

Further campaigns for 2016 are being planned with EgyptAir and South African Airways along with further member airlines.

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