A couple of months ago, I witnessed a great example of strategic local marketing in an industry where such is still considered uncharted territory. Let me set the stage here:

The Boise Airport is NOT a major metropolitan airport. With the exception of a small handful of destinations, most air travel requires a stop in Salt Lake, Seattle, Denver, Chicago or Minneapolis. There roughly 5 major airlines that fly in and out of Boise and they are all battling for their slice of local market share in a relatively depressed Boise/Treasure Valley economy.

Traditionally, airlines have spent countless dollars on large national brand awareness advertising campaigns. However, with the large decline in traveler volume and ever-increasing operating costs, innovative airlines appear to be ditching the old way of advertising and deploying a more strategic and cost-effective approach to advertising. Enter local advertising and return to story…

I was attending the Boise State vs. University of Idaho football game. Because of the rivalry nature of this game, the local Air Force base provided the sold-out crowd with a classic sporting event crowd pleaser: the fly-by. Just when everyone was coming down from the excitement associated with three military helicopters floating across the stadium, a second fly-by took place. But this time it wasn’t a military aircraft. Nope. It was a Horizon Air commercial turbo-prop airplane. What made it even better was that the plane was adorned with a brand new Boise State University paint scheme. Boise State fans erupted in cheers.

Regardless of who your favorite team is, the principal of the matter is noteworthy. It was the first time I had seen the advertising paradigm shift beginning to take place in the airline industry. They followed up the publicity stunt with a highly targeted local advertising campaign across a variety of local advertising mediums intended to generate a direct response for their Boise Mystery City promotion. While I didn’t rush out to buy an airline ticket, it did prompt me to visit horizonair.com when the time came to book my next business travel trip.

Seeing local marketing take place across a variety of industries known for their national brand awareness campaigns excites me. I can already see it now: Balihoo’s Local Marketing Automation tool will feature a new capability under the ‘Out of Home’ medium. Airline clients would log into the application, plug in images and our application would render a real-time preview of the localized airplane. And because the application is vendor-agnostic, the design could be routed to the client’s vendor of choice: Bombardier, Airbus or Boeing.