Air NZ banks on star appeal in blogging push

Air New Zealand has kicked off a celebrity-driven online campaign in China, aimed at driving awareness of the carrier's home country and its new Shanghai to Auckland direct service.<BR><BR>Over the next six months, a number of Chinese celebrities will travel to New Zealand on Air New Zealand, with each  experiencing the different aspects the country has to offer. <BR><BR>The group will pen personal blogs for consumers in China on <A href="http://www.experiencesomethingnew.com">www.experiencesomethingnew.com</A>, covering everything from food and wine, to romance and adventure, thus essentially acting as tour guides to the affluent, 25 to 49-year-old consumer segment. The first celebrity featured in the blogging campaign is popular actor and singer Xia Yu, famous for his work in In the Heat of the Sun.<BR><BR>"In an extremely competitive marketplace, against competitors with larger marketing budget capacity, Air New Zealand needed to find an innovative way of engaging a mass consumer base in order to educate them," said Gavin Cranston, director, Proximity China. "By engaging some of China's most popular celebrities to blog about their holidays to New Zealand, the airline is gaining instant exposure to an audience the size of which we could normally only reach through a much bigger spend on traditional media channels."<BR><BR>The campaign will run for six months, leading up to the airline's inaugural Shanghai to Auckland flight. The drive also includes PR, events, print, press and ambient, with OMD overseeing media.