Bartle Bogle Hegarty (London)

In 2008, British Airways ran ads in the British press that used photos that were taken the previous day at Heathrow Airport Terminal 5. The airline got a lot of flack and criticism earlier in the year because the terminal was plagued with delays and bugs when it first opened. The idea of this ad campaign, created by BBH London, is to show how confident the airline is that T5 is now operating smoothly. A photographer was hired by BBH and went to the terminal at 6:30 AM to look for passengers. At 1 PM a team assembled at the agency in London selected 4 of the best pictures and emailed them to British Airways in order for them to select one for the advertisement. The ad was completely finished by 5:30 PM was sent to U.K. newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph, Independent and Evening Standard. A 30-second radio spot was even cut and sent to radio stations by 4:30 p.m.

Even though I think that this advertisement is an excellent idea, if something happened to go wrong at T5 and delays occurred, the ads would have to show that. I feel that these ads won't be very effective because BBH is not going to choose a picture that shows a negative situation...they are going to pick the very BEST picture and use that for the advertisement. If anyone has had a bad experience that day in the airport in T5, they are going to lose trust/respect for British Airways AND advertising in general.