British Airways’ #lookup Points To The Skies

Before moving to Australia I had a little ritual that I went through every-time I saw a plane in the sky.

In order to stop myself from feeling like there were people going somewhere exciting whilst I was stuck in rainy old England (or Ireland) I would always pretend that the plane was flying from Aberdeen to Luton, or vice versa, because, in my mind, there could be nothing exciting or jealousy-inducing in either place.

Except when I was a kid and Concorde flew over my house every-day; that was just cool.

Well, it seems that BA have just ruined that little fantasy with their new campaign which taps into the very simple insight that we all lift our eyes when we hear planes flying overhead and many of us probably wonder where it’s heading. In order to highlight the range of their routes they have created digital billboards which update with details of flights passing by.

A Fast Company article compares it to interactive billboards in Sydney Airport that Google is using to promote its Play store, but I think the playfulness of the BA ones are more aesthetically appealing. But they’re both pretty clever.

A while back I wrote about a band called BADBADNOTGOOD whose name tips a hat to the fact that words can have more than one meaning. In the same vein I think we should start talking about MARKETINGMARKETINGNOTDIGITAL to highlight work that may use digital technology but is, at its heart, just great marketing.

BA’s #lookup definitely ticks that box.

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