For the last 20 years Star Alliance has taken people on journeys of discovery and enabled cultural connections around the world.

However, regardless of its 28 member carriers and more than 18,450 daily flights to 1,300 airports in 190 countries
— for numerous reasons, the Alliance itself was not being talked about as much as its member airlines were.

At a time when the travel industry is increasingly being defined by younger, more tech-savvy travellers with the power of social media to define and document transformational experiences, Star Alliance played an important supporting role when they could have been the star of the show.

In marking their 20th Anniversary, Star Alliance had an ideal opportunity to play a more leading role. Their ambition
was to highlight the scale and benefit of their network by celebrating the stories of their travellers as well as the connections and adventures the Alliance and its members made possible.

The campaign challenge was threefold:
1) To raise awareness of the first ever Alliance 20th Anniversary celebration
2) To create a unique cultural experience that brought out the Star Alliance member airlines relationship
3) Take viewers on a journey that would help them connect with those respective cultures and truly understand what
a unique local cultural experience would look like

These experiences were meant to be extraordinary, thereby appealing to both business and leisure travellers alike.

National Geographic and The Wall Street Journal came together for the first time in our history to create a content and media partnership with Star Alliance entitled ‘Connecting Cultures’.

The campaign was designed to leverage the best of both publications; combining WSJ’s brand (most credible for 29 years in a row), authoritative voice (39 Pulitzers), WSJ. Custom Studios (120 awards in the past 3 years), and access to influential leaders (reaching 2 in 3 C-Suites globally and 64% of frequent hotel guests), as well as National Geographic’s signature photography, travel expertise, social following (169.5MM+ Facebook followers, #1 media brand- Instagram, #1 Media house – Twitter) and audience (the most readers (9.6 million) driven to explore the world, 76% of whom don’t read any other travel title).

The strategy at the heart of our partnership was to build an experiential, digital and social programme that didn’t just talk about connecting cultures, but actually inspired new adventures that hadn’t been experienced before.
The “Connecting Cultures” campaign began with a worldwide ‘cultural experience’ competition hosted by National Geographic – offering 21 people the chance to become ‘Mileage Millionaires’. Asking audiences to upload and share photos and short description of their favourite cultural experiences, the competition attracted over 59,000 entries around the world- each looking to win one of the biggest prizes in travel history. Every entrant’s experience was
captured and shared on an interactive Cultural Experience Map hosted on the Star Alliance website. This online hub of searchable inspiration and memories was the perfect platform to align Star Alliance with captivating and personal
travel experiences.

Simultaneously, we launched a series of 5 stunning films built around destinations served by the five founding member airlines (Air Canada, Lufthansa, SAS, THAI and United) – each of which offered viewers a unique local cultural experience.

Fronting the film series was Robert Reid, a world-renowned National Geographic travel writer who, for over 20 years, has travelled the globe immersing himself in different cultures, investigating the whys behind how we experience the world and telling interesting, immersive stories that give his audience a new perspective. ‘Connecting Cultures’ saw Reid experience the extraordinary with a series of unique challenges from Muay Thai training in Bangkok to learning survival skills from the Inuit at the edge of the Arctic Circle.

Trailer can be found here: https://vimeo.com/228386063

The video series was amplified using unmissable executions across print, social and digital platforms.

Our shared passion for strategic storytelling and cultural exploration captured more than adventures — it also captured the imagination and attention of our audience.

We significantly increased engagement with Star Alliance, dramatically boosted the brand promoter score and were recognised with a Gold Lovie Award, the most prestigious and only truly pan-European award that honours the best of the internet.

A campaign that inspired readers to go on a new adventure and discover unique cultural experiences they never thought were possible
Statistics That Speak For Themselves:

Reach
1.3 billion reached globally across all paid, owned and earned channels

Engagement
Over 6.6 million website visits – Doubling our target
Nearly 60k validated competition entries, generating a rich mapping tool of cultural experiences
3.4 million interactions with mapping tool
2.2 million views of Connecting Cultures films, more than eight times our target
42k likes/comments/shares on Nat Geo’s social posts alone
Gold Lovie Award winner

Brand Impact
Brand equity tracking up 28%
Brand recommendation scores (Net Promoter Score): a 700% increase
Brand impression and Intention to fly scores @ 9 out of 10

Business Effectiveness
120k FFP referrals from the promotion – exceeding our target by 700%