Great Work: easyJet, Look & Book
A new feature created for easyJet’s app offers a novel way to book flights using screen grabs of Instagram posts
In the past few years, Instagram has transformed the way we look for holidays. Whether it’s browsing friends’ photos, influencer accounts or travel-related hashtags, the platform is now a major source of travel inspiration, helping users uncover new destinations and research places before they visit.
easyJet has tapped into this trend with a new app feature that allows customers to find flights to destinations featured on Instagram. The Look & Book feature, created by VCCP in partnership with Travelport Digital, uses AI to detect the location of a post. Customers can upload a screen grab of an image, and the app will serve up a range of available flight options to the nearest airport.
Daniel Young, Head of Digital Experience at easyJet, says it aims to make the booking experience simpler and more fun: “It’s a feature that is genuinely useful for passengers, is a lot of fun to use and it’s commercially minded … in other words, it ticks pretty much every box for us,” says Young.
VCCP pitched the concept to easyJet based on insights into people’s behaviour on Instagram: “The fact that Instagram is a huge source of travel inspiration isn’t news to anyone, and there are lots of brilliant existing ways for travel brands to use Instagram’s advertising products to reach customers and encourage bookings,” explains Alex Dalman, Senior Account Director at VCCP. “For all that, it’s people’s peer networks, not branded content, that are the more natural source of inspiration … the challenge for a brand is to be a part of that process in a way that actually adds value and facilitates rather than obstructs. That’s where Look & Book comes in.”
“There used to be a lot of steps between seeing a photo that made you think ‘I want to go there!’ and actually booking your trip: figuring out where it is, researching nearest airports, checking which airlines fly there and if they fly from somewhere near you,” she continues. “[We] realised that if easyJet could be the brand to make this process faster and more seamless, [it] could own that precious moment of peer-to-peer Instagram wanderlust and convert it into sales.”
Look & Book uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Cognitive tools to analyse the text in an image and pick out key landmarks. Once a location has been identified, the platform performs a geo-search to find the nearest airports. The feature was created by VCCP and integrated within the easyJet app by Travelport Digital.
The feature launched on iOS in October. It is currently only available to UK customers, but Dalman says it will be rolled out across Android devices and other European markets “once we know the demand is there”. It is being promoted via Facebook and Instagram ads, with a wider awareness campaign planned for later this year.
“We ran a Facebook & Instagram advertising campaign alongside our PR launch at the start of October, and will be following up with an easyJet owned channels & DOOH campaign, and a second burst of Instagram activity in November,” explains Dalman.
Claire Strickett, Planner at VCCP, says Look & Book is part of easyJet’s wider ambition to create a seamless and enjoyable customer experience – a strategy that has informed recent ad campaigns and digital innovations for the brand. “It’s essential that every element of communications and the customer experience contributes to that in some way,” says Strickett. It’s a fun addition to the app, and an interesting response to Instagram’s growing influence in the travel sector.
Introducing our new app feature, Look&Book
Try our new app feature, Look&Book, where you can book a flight using just a photo.Take a screenshot of a destination you like, upload it to our app and we’ll find the flights to get you there. Use Instagram for best results.
Gepostet von easyJet am Montag, 1. Oktober 2018
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