How Air China Used Facebook Check-Ins for Their New Campaign

Posted by Charu Dwivedi Jan 27th, 2012

While surfing through the net, I found an interesting campaign by Air China, using Facebook’s check-ins. Facebook places is one of the most neglected marketing channels and here it has been very effectively used.

The airline wanted to raise awareness among customers in Sweden about the fact that they flew to countries all over Asia and not just to China itself and still emerge as winners in Swedish markets.

Concept: They realised that people had already experienced Asia and one of the most evident ways to leverage that was through Asian cuisine. So Air China tied up with restaurants serving different Asian cuisines in Stockholm. The instructions were printed on the menus. The restaurants being only too happy to help out as it drove more customers into their premises.

People were asked to check-in to restaurants serving food from the countries that they flew to. All the check-ins were then added to a leaderboard on a Facebook app. Each week, whoever got more votes on the leader board got 2 tickets to Asia by Air China.

The contest gained momentum and lasted several weeks. It emerged as a win-win situation for both restaurants as well as Air China. Restaurants got more guests and Air China got more perspective customers who can speak for their brand. Personally, I feel that this was a smart campaign without any on the face sales as well as works like a lead generation mechanism.

Take a look at this video case study and do tell us how you found it :)