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Armchair Travelers Tune In For Olympics United Ads

August 18, 2008 3:15 PM

Flying can be a dream, according to United Airlines advertisements that debuted during the 2008 Summer Olympics.

As air travel gets pricey, carriers are doing their best to attract first-class and business travelers - in part by touting their in-flight luxury amenities. In a primetime example, United is marketing its flights for customers with the deepest pockets in a vibrant and unusual series of ads featured during the 2008 Beijing Games.

With five animated ads, United aims to illustrate to business and first-class travelers what a trip a long flight can truly be. In short, flying can be as surreal as transforming into a butterfly and then floating to a flat-nights' sleep. Or having an orchestra of sea creatures perform their hearts out as your plane crosses the water. You can watch the ads on You Tube here.

"Unveiling new ads during the Summer Olympics provides us with a high-profile, worldwide stage to effectively showcase the comforts of our new international first and business class service," said Dennis Cary, United's senior vice president of marketing, in a recent statement. "As we roll out our new international premium travel experience, now is the optimal time to demonstrate to the global traveler that we understand how vastly important a truly lie-flat bed in both first and business class is to feeling relaxed and rewarded."

Indeed, as seen in the commercials, last week United began offering seats that allow passengers traveling to Asia to make the trip lying down. The lie-flat seats were already offered on some trans-Atlantic seats to Europe starting last fall, but are now an option for those traveling across the Pacific from San Francisco.

Whether lavish seats or sparkling amenities, United isn't the only the carrier offering new luxury options, but it did secure coveted advertising spots during NBC’s Olympic coverage as an official airline sponsor of the 2008 U.S. Olympic team. United said the carrier flew most of the U.S. athletes to the Games in Beijing.

United does not say how much the ad campaign cost. According to Nielsen media ratings summarizing previous Olympic coverage, advertisers during the 2006 Torino Games paid $350,000 for a 30-second commercial. Nielsen estimated that between 1996 and 2006, the cost of advertising during the Olympics rose 40 percent.

With NBC's Olympics coverage averaging 29.7 million viewers per night during these Games, according to Nielsen, just how much those numbers translate into more business for United remains unseen.

"That's the problem with TV advertising – it's hard to track it from seeing an ad to going out and making a purchase," said Brian Steinberg, television editor at Advertising Age. "I think ultimately the question gets answered in revenue or sales."

Steinberg said that unlike the one-game, one-night Superbowl, advertisers during the Olympics have more time to communicate their messages by producing commercials that run over and over again for weeks instead of just once.

So perhaps the ads will convince high rollers who aren't Olympic athletes to fly to Asia on United too.

And for those who can't afford the trip, relax. Even if you're parked in front of the television and the back of the plane, you can always lie flat on the couch.

-ABC News' Kate Barrett

August 18, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (0)

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