Inside United Airlines’ bold new outdoor ad strategy

As part of a new outdoor campaign in New York City, United Airlines secured placement on a digital screen spanning seven stories of a building on West 52nd Street. While the ad is tall, the copy is decidedly short—“Heck yeah, we fly there,” the airline boasts against a large photo of Dubai’s towering skyline. The ad is indicative of United’s new approach to outdoor ads, which can be explained by a couple of rules: keep it simple and avoid travel clichés at all costs. “We really tried to stay grounded in the reality of why people travel and not get lost in the daydreaming—I think we’ve banned the word wanderlust and daydream from our vocabulary,” said Meg Mitchell, United’s global creative director, who recently gave Ad Age a tour of some of the airline’s new OOH ads, including three digital placements in Manhattan. The new outdoor strategy comes two years after United began a broad advertising overhaul that led to a campaign and design platform meant to set the Chicago-based airline apart in the crowded sky of carriers. Created with 72andSunny, “Good Leads the Way” resulted in a brand boost that has helped United stake its claim on sustainability and purpose marketing. Yet while new work has resonated, there was still an opportunity to improve, particularly in out-of-home, a category that includes a lot of city and airport placements. The brand is flipping OOH ads to the new format in all of its hub airports this month. Ads will also run in cities such as Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles and San Francisco. While it’s too early to get a read on the new billboards, which began popping up this month, Maggie Schmerin, United’s chief advertising officer, has high hopes, recently describing it as United’s “boldest” OOH advertising campaign yet. It stemmed from studying “what message is right for which moment and then from a design perspective, it really evolved from there,” said Schmerin, speaking at Ad Age’s Business of Brands conference in September. NextGen Marketing Summit Join us for a crash course on Gen Z, DTC marketing and the creator economy Register today The new strategy is several years in the making—beginning in 2019 when United first started pursuing a close examination of its OOH ads. The brand’s research found that its ads were not always legible and there were too many words on the screen, Mitchell recalled. “We had come up with this beautiful pairing of images on paper and in a deck, but it’s really hard to compute in real life,” she said, adding that her team also had to consider how the ads would appear on social media. “We had to take a step back.” That step involved creating a clear design system of rules for do’s and do not’s, according to Lauren Smith, executive creative director at 72andSunny, which won United’s business in 2021. Such restrictions resulted in more creative flexibility, she added, noting that a seven-words-or-less rule enabled some fun for writers. “The thing that we notice is that if I’m a customer flying United, I don’t care whether a design agency made this or an advertising agency or United’s internal team made this—all I care about is what I see on my journey,” she said. “So what we really wanted to do was find something that felt like this was speaking the brand language, not an advertising language, and so we radically simplified it.” Below, a closer look at some of the new ads that Mitchell showed Ad Age during the New York tour—and what they say about United’s new approach. First stop: 33rd Street and 7th Avenue The billboard, which wraps around the corner, shows United flight attendants Elissa and Luke looking down to street level and gesturing in a way to welcome travelers up onto a plane—it’s a point-of-view shot from the customer’s perspective. “Get in. We’re going everywhere,” text reads. That bold tone is purposeful and part of what executives describe as “biggest airline energy.” “It’s welcoming from our employees but also speaks to the fact that you know we can take you pretty much anywhere you want to go in the world,” said Mitchell. She noted a lot of ads also “hero” the employees as part of the “Good Leads the Way” work, which is now in its third chapter, one that focuses on routes and destinations. The work also doubles as a rallying cry for United employees to have something they can stand behind in brand purpose. “It’s not just a tagline,” Mitchell said. “It’s really important for us to hero [employees] in all of the work so they see themselves.” The language is also meant to be less advertiser, more human, according to Smith. “It’s inviting, it’s how you might talk to each other instead of how a corporation talks to who they think is a human,” she added. In comparison, an ad from 2022 (below) still showed United employees but had more text. The POV was from the employees, rather than the customer. For its new ads, United used its globe word mark and a single shade of blue, without a secondary color palette, for consistency. Second stop: 42nd Street and 8th Avenue While United previously advertised on 8th Avenue at 42nd Street, the airline took a new approach this fall by posting its first “synced digital spectacular.” Looking north on the avenue, a digital billboard on the west side shows a man relaxing in a floating tube on the water in Tahiti. He floats across the street to the opposite two corner billboard panels. The three screens communicate to each other as text repeats across each screen: “New York is going places. All the places.” When coming up with the imagery, the team at United considered the reasons why people travel and tried to avoid typical travel tropes. Some vacation-worthy destinations are sprinkled in the new campaign, but a lot of the ads showcase other events and the idea of returning home. An OOH ad from five years ago (below) took a different approach, with just text and a punny headline that didn’t communicate the same human-centric focus as the new campaign. Last year, United spent at least $13.15 million on out-of-home advertising, according to the Out of Home Advertising Association of America, which uses Vivvix data to capture about 75% of total spend. The airline ranked No. 41 on the OAAA’s list of Top 50 OOH brands. A United spokeswoman declined to share how the brand’s OOH spending this year compares with 2023. Third stop: West 52nd Street and Broadway United’s billboard on West 52nd Street continues the brand’s new strong and playful tone. Showcasing an image of Dubai, the digital corner screen reads, “Heck yeah, we fly there.” Mitchell explained that the language tested “really well in research” before the billboard went up this month. “You know how everything starts to feel the same when you look at ads?” she asked, referencing a couple holding hands walking on a beach as an example. “We pushed really, really hard against that in the out-of-home and also in all of our film work.” While it’s too early to see how the new marketing is affecting sales, United is already in a position of strength based on its recent results. Earlier this week, the carrier reported a 2.5% rise in third-quarter revenue to $14.84 billion, surpassing the $14.78 billion expected by analysts. Net income declined to $965 million from $1.14 billion a year earlier. Beyond outdoor, United continues to tinker with its ad approach. It recently debuted a series of linear TV ads, many of which include true brand stories sourced from customers and staffers. Some of the new work, including digital videos, shows user-generated content from the internet. A-List & Creativity Awards Enter for a chance to be recognized as the best in advertising Submit your entry here

Inside United Airlines’ bold new outdoor ad strategy

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