Well no they clearly don’t but if Middle Earth did have an airport you could be guaranteed that Air New Zealand (ANZ) would have most of the landing rights!
ANZ have confirmed a very logical and long lasting brand partnership with the Hobbit Trilogy to become the official airline of Middle Earth.
This new partnership marketing strategy with the forthcoming films follows there very successful partnership with the Lord of the Rings trilogy. That partnership included Tourism New Zealand and I am sure that the same will happen again with this partnership.
ANZ are committing to two Hobbit-branded Boring 777 airliners that will act as flying billboards (for those customers who are 30,000 feet up…….) on routes between UK and North America . There will also be a new passenger safety video featuring aspects and characters from the films. However since the deal was done Peter Jackson, the Hobbit director announced that there will in fact be three films as there was for Lord of the Rings so ANZ will have to add a third plane to their list for the third film….
With both Warner Bros/New Line and ANZ spending millions on promoting the film/the destination New Zealand will be the hottest place to visit over the next three years. It’s awe-inspiring landscapes featured throughout the Hobbit films as they were in Lord of the Rings drove tourism up significantly during that period of time.
The great thing about film partnerships is that they live forever and ANZ have been very wise to look to seek this opportunity and exploit it for all it’s worth in tourism dollars by connecting the film’s scenery with an action to drive people to come to New Zealand and experience it for themselves.
Last time there were even Lord of the Rings inspired tours and many tourism brochures featured the tagline “as seen in Lord of the Rings” in their marketing. I am sure that there will be many promotions and incentives that ANZ will use to inspire would –be customers to fly to New Zealand and re-live Hobbit scenes (without the dragon of course…..).
Social media will also connect the dots and allow potential customers from around the world to match scenes with reality in New Zealand with the ultimate aim of bringing tourists to this land far far away…..
You could extend this to so many different films….New York for Batman…..and Transformers and Avengers….(in fact most action films have some kind of scene or setting in NY, it’s like all the directors must come from there or they offer subsidies or it’s just general laziness on behalf of Hollywood! I digress)….so you could have Batman branded American Airlines planes…..all black!
Sherlock Holmes branded British Airways jets with a top hat on the front! Aeroflot for James Bond…well the James Bond baddies anyway with a pussycat on every seat……..Virgin Galactic for The Matrix, Alien, Men in Black……of course the best films would be ones with planes in them…Top Gun, Planes, Trains and Automobiles and the ultimate Airplane!