Business. Leisure. Burnout. 

Business. Leisure. Identity crisis. 

These reasons for flying British Airways form part of a new campaign and positioning for the iconic airline brand from Uncommon. 

The ‘A British Original’ campaign sets out to ‘explore the individual and original reasons people travel.’  The campaign is very contextual, spanning over 500 unique print, digital and outdoor executions and over 32 different short films. 

An approach which underlines just 500 of the myriad reasons for travel, which include the desire ‘to eat a tomato that actually tastes like tomato’ or get ‘olives the size of my actual fist.’

By riffing off the commonly asked question: ‘What is the purpose of your visit?’ British Airways delivers out of the standard box responses which serve up a much needed slice of humanity and humour. 

Some of the examples of reasons to travel include ‘Because I have too much on my plate, none of it seafood’ and ‘To feed the social feed’. These will continue to adapt according to location, time of day, weather and what’s happening in the news. 

The copy will also sometimes relate directly to the medium with playful bus wraps and press ads adopting a battenburg approach with adjacent placements that have interacting reasons for why we travel. 

The sheer number of executions prevents fatigue and pulls off that often difficult marketing challenge: to recognise and reflect their mass market consumers as individuals. MG OMD handled all planning and buying for the campaign.

Hamish McVey, Head of Brands and Marketing at British Airways, explained: “We really wanted this campaign to celebrate the originality of our customers and our people. Every time a customer boards a plane, they are doing so for a unique reason, and we know that those journeys are so important. We are working hard on making positive changes across our airline and this brand campaign allows us to showcase our motivation, which is our customers and our people.”

Lucy Jameson, Co-founder at Uncommon added: “Both Britain as a nation and British Airways as a brand have a deep history of originality. From scheduling the first commercial service to Little Simz; originality drives us forward. It’s at the core of our pioneering spirit.

We wanted to celebrate British originality at a time when we’ve never needed to rediscover it more.”

Jameson added that the campaign is ‘just the beginning’ as she explained: “We hope that, going forward, each and every interaction with the brand feels as original as each and every one of the hundreds of original executions we’ve produced for the launch.”