KLM Care Tag
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines
Issue 44 | September 2017
Agency
DDB Tribal Amsterdam
Creative Team
Creative Directors Ed van Bennekom, Jasper Diks Producers DDB Jesse Mons, Jolijn Visser, Sophie van Pelt
Production Team
Production Company Comrad Director Kay Lindhout Producer Marius van de Weerd Business Director Esther te Pas
Other Credits
Client KLM Frank Houben, Marit Badia Hilligehekken, Natascha van Roode
Date
July 2017
Background
Amsterdam had become one of the most popular tourist destinations of the world. In January 2017, more than a million people visited this city of 900,000 inhabitants.
KLM wanted to be the most customer-centric airline in Europe. The question was, how could they help visitors to their capital city, expanding their service beyond their planes and the airport?
Idea
Passengers who came to Amsterdam with KLM were offered the KLM Care Tag, a smart audio luggage tag that provided location-based, spoken tips on how to explore the city. It consisted of an offline GPS module and a speaker. It gave traveller's tips at the right place at the right time. Using the voices of KLM crew, it advised how to cycle across the busiest intersections, where to find a place to lock up your bike securely, how to avoid pickpockets. It also gave more light-hearted hints about where to eat for free or where to see great street art.
To have their very own tour guide, visitors just attached the tag to their luggage or clothing.
The first batch of Care Tags were only available in English but other languages were being developed.
Results
The campaign launched in July 2017 and full results were not available at the time of Directory's publication. However, the story had been big news on travel sites and in national and international news media. The video was watched over 5 million times in the first five days. Social media sentiment was almost 100% positive and comments indicated that KLM was achieving its objective to be thought of as the most forward-thinking airline that offered great personal service.
Our Thoughts
This Care Tag is simply one in a long line of innovative ideas from KLM. The airline realised early on that digital is all about customer service. How can booking be made faster, easier, more rewarding? How can the airport experience be less stressful? How can passengers who are running late through no fault of their own be helped on their way? They have come up with solutions to all those problems. Not to mention creating the 'Lost and Found' beagle, whose YouTube video has notched up 23 million views. Then there was the plane they turned into a holiday home in partnership with Airbnb, all stunts to support the 'we care' positioning.
Less of an advertising idea but winner of several innovation awards was their eTrack electronic bag tag system.
Useful, usable and delightful. KLM really does 'get it'.