BA’s flight path message is a simple yet successful PR stunt

From the Jubilee to the Olympics, the Great British summer of PR stuntery continues.

This week we're impressed by another BA stunt. This means it's another moment in the sun for the boys and girls at Cake Group, who can take enormous credit for the sheer simplicity of their “Welcome to Our Turf” stunt for the national carrier, which is mounting an erstwhile and largely rewarded campaign to regain its position as “the media’s favourite airline”.

For those who didn’t see it, the stunt was a textbook lesson in that sometimes the obvious idea is the best.

The story made it all over the place with the pictures making it across the web.

Why did it work?
 

Because, on so many levels, it is so obvious.

Not infrequently (and this may of course be a personal thing rather than a universal), we come up with the client’s riff on the tried-and-tested tactic.

In this case, paint a bloody great message in a field on a flight path. It’s route A stuff, let’s be honest.

Then of course, a whole team (or agency for that matter) engages in a week’s worth of soul-searching, creative brainstorming and tubes-home pondering trying to come up with something better.

The truth in this case was that the obvious answer was the best. It may have been done before as a tactic. It may seem like the straightforward and, somehow, less creative route.

But creativity is not about complexity for the sake of it. It isn’t about torturing a client’s message into an idea into which it will simply not fit. It’s about conveying messages as clearly as possible to as many people as possible.

This idea is a reminder that where the obvious answer presents itself, try as we might, there are sometimes reasons to embrace it rather than out-think ourselves or around it.

In other words, the adage that the “old ones are the best” is sometimes as aptly applied to a stunt as it is to the gags of by-gone eras.