Marketing campaigns for Hollywood Burbank Airport boost passenger counts, ad exec says
For the past three years, it has been Hollywood Burbank Airport’s goal to raise awareness of the airfield’s existence to travelers outside Southern California to increase its passenger numbers.
After several months of marketing campaigns geared toward leisure and business travelers, the rebranding efforts by the airport appear to be paying off, officials said.
Michael Fiore, co-founder of the South Pasadena-based branding firm Anyone Collective, told the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority on Monday that, although his company cannot take full credit for the rising passenger numbers at Hollywood Burbank, the marketing campaigns appear to be working.
He said the social-media campaign his firm started this past fall reached more than 1.6 million people, and the marketing ads it placed on those platforms were viewed almost 3.2 million times.
The main demographic that saw the ads were between the ages of 18 and 34 years old, with about 60% of them being men and 40% women.
The marketing campaigns heavily revolved around current events in and around Southern California.
For example, the branding firm pushed out numerous social-media ads regarding spring training games for the Los Angeles Dodgers and Los Angeles Angels that took place in Arizona.
Anyone Collective also used March Madness, spring break and the local weather as reasons why travelers should use Hollywood Burbank for their travel needs.
Fiore said the paid ads his company purchased from Google were also successful in educating travelers about the airport.
Of the roughly 205,000 people who saw the paid ad in a Google search, about 20,000 clicked on the ad, which led to Hollywood Burbank’s website.
Fiore said the click-through rate, which is how often someone clicks on an ad after seeing it, for the airport’s ads was about 13.5%, which is well above the travel industry standard of 4.6%.
The branding firm isn’t the only company that has noticed the effectiveness of its marketing campaign. Fiore said Alaska Airlines has started using similar ads to try to convince travelers to fly with the company.
anthonyclark.carpio@latimes.com
Twitter: @acocarpio
