Reason for travel? British Airways ads take the mickey with 500 alternative responses

It’s not the first time a brand has humorously leveraged a questionnaire format. Still, British Airways takes the biscuit for the scale and effect of its latest campaign, A British Original. The work, from Uncommon Creative Studio and media agency MG, is based on a simple premise; each ad nods to the bland box-ticking that usually accompanies the question ‘What is the purpose of your visit?’ when flying abroad. According to an Uncommon press release, a British Original offers alternative reasons for travelling with a “record-breaking” 500 print, digital and outdoor executions.

“Burnout”, “mischief” and “completed my dating app” are some of the alternative answers that appear alongside the standard “business” and “leisure” options. In all, the series features 500 unique lines of copy.

According to Uncommon, it will continue to adapt according to the 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,” states the press release. While the ads are sometimes tongue-in-cheek, “sometimes moving”, they all feature a stripped-back approach, “simply showing a tick box”.

A British Original will appear across TV, video on demand, cinema, radio, print, display, social, OOH and sites including Piccadilly Lights and Heathrow. It is MG OMD’s most bespoke project to date.

Lucy Jameson, co-founder at Uncommon Creative Studio states: “We’ve started by shining a light on all the original reasons we fly – both for customers and British Airways’ people – but this is just the beginning. 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.”

A British Original is accompanied by 32 short films based around the alternative reasons to travel and featuring people behind the airline, including a British Airways pilot.