Icelandair begins service from Vancouver International Airport on May 14th, and to celebrate, a social media campaign called The Icelandair #scaVANgerhunt was launched.
Icelandair representatives hit the streets of Vancouver and surrounding areas giving away free round-trip tickets each day from Thursday, April 10th through Saturday, April 12th. Other cool prizes, including gift certificates for travel, t-shirts, Icelandic music CDs and Icelandair branded merchandise, were also given away throughout the campaign.
Each morning of the #scaVANgerhunt Icelandair provided that day’s password via Facebook and Twitter, along with clues given at various times to help find the secret location of the tickets. The first person to arrive at the location and reveal the password to the Icelandair representatives won a pair of round-trip tickets to one of more than 20 destinations in Europe, including Iceland.
Icelandair has implemented similar campaigns in some of their other gateways including Toronto, Boston and Denver, with enthusiasm from their followers growing and building from one city to the next. The moment the password and clues are announced, the race begins, and within minutes people are running, biking, driving, even taxiing to find the tickets! Locations that locals may know are chosen, but not necessarily traditional landmarks for example, in hopes of avoiding potentially uncontrollable crowds. Locations would also be chosen with references to Iceland to tie in with the airline and their hub.
With passwords such as “Icelandair is coming to Vancouver on May 13th”, “Stopover in Iceland” and “Icelandair flies to more than 20 destinations in Europe”, the first #scaVANgerhunt winner found the tickets at a local Starbucks, followed by the Lost Lagoon for day two’s winner, and finishing up on day three with tickets found at The Postcard Place on Granville Island.
Due to the success of these promotional campaigns, Icelandair is planning visit to other gateway cities, with the next stop this June in Washington, D.C.
Read more about the Icelandair #scaVANgerhunt from a local Vancouverite:
Kudos to the genius marketing team behind Icelandair’s on-going social campaign, “#scaVANgerhunt”! The campaign, which kicked off today and runs until Saturday, had Vancouverites hanging on to each and every Tweet and Facebook post this afternoon, and literally had them taking flight from their seats to chase down the secret location somewhere in the city for free tickets to Europe.
This campaign is amazing in so many ways. While many other companies have done contests on social media, none have had quite the magnitude or sense of adventure as this one – seriously, what says more “adventurous” than a scavenger hunt?! But what I found so impressive was the contest felt organic: you weren’t required to follow their social accounts beforehand, you didn’t have to ReTweet their posts or comment on their Facebook page, and best of all, you didn’t have to give away your most precious commodity in order to participate – your email. The people who participated (myself, included) were genuinely interested in the contest as it had a sense of competitiveness, mystery, and of course, a fantastic prize.
I didn’t win the coveted prize but to Icelandair’s credit, I now know some cool facts about Iceland, and (more importantly for them) that Icelandair now flies to Reykjavik and other European destinations. Mission accomplished.
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