Title	KLM BONDING BUFFET
Brand	KLM ROYAL DUTCH AIRLINES
Product/Service	KLM BONDING BUFFET
Category	B02. Use of Ambient Media: large scale
Entrant	DDB & TRIBAL AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS
Idea Creation	DDB & TRIBAL AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS
Production	WEFILM Amsterdam, THE NETHERLANDS

Name	Company	Position
Nick Maas	DDB & Tribal Amsterdam	Copywriter
Leo van Oss	DDB & Tribal Amsterdam	Art Director
Ed van Bennekom	DDB & Tribal Amsterdam	Creative Director
Jasper Diks	DDB & Tribal Amsterdam	Creative Director
Ralf Hesen	DDB & Tribal Amsterdam	Strategy Director
Sophie van Pelt	DDB & Tribal Worldwide, Amsterdam	Executive Producer
Esther te Pas	DDB & Tribal Amsterdam	Business Director
Jan Boon	WeFilm	Director
Ernst Koning	Ilias Ernst	Industrial Designer
Tim van Paassen	The Compound	Online editor
Daan Nieuwenhuis	Daan Nieuwenhuis	D.O.P
Daan Wierda	Daan Wierda Beeldmontage	Offline editor
Massive music	Massive music	Music
Mirjam Esveld	KLM Royal Dutch Airlines	Global Marketing Communications Manager
Natascha van Roode	KLM Royal Dutch Airlines	Head of Global Marketing Communication
Frank Houben	KLM Royal Dutch Airlines	Global Brand & MarCom Director

The Campaign

Airports can be lonely places. Especially when you are travelling around Christmastime: a time for sharing, unity and togetherness. KLM is in the business of bringing people together all around the world. What if it could already bring people together while on the road? We installed a table for 20 at Schiphol airport, but it was 4.5 meters high, so that people could not reach the Christmas dinner served on it. 20 stools surrounding the table were equipped with a pressure sensor. With every traveller that sat down on a stool, the table lowered a little. Travellers were excited and started to work together to lower the table. Dozens of people from all over the world put their phones or books aside and enjoyed a very special Christmas dinner together. We filmed the event and shared the video – all about sharing, unity and togetherness – online right before Christmas.

Campaign Success

In the busiest part of one of Europe’s biggest airports (Schiphol) we built a table you couldn’t miss. It was there from morning till evening, giving every traveller that day the opportunity to use it and thus bond with fellow travellers. The table had a Christmas dinner on top of it, towered 4.5 meters high, and was surrounded by 20 stools. Every time a person sat down on a stool, the table lowered a little bit, inviting strangers to work together. A compilation of the day’s best moments was shared via KLM’s social channels just before Christmas. We concentrated all our promotional efforts in a single week around Christmas. 80% of the results are accomplished through earned media effects.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

In just a couple of days, KLM’s Bonding Buffet video grew to be the most popular KLM online video ever. In total it reached over 150 million (!) people worldwide, collected over 95 million views and was shared almost 1 million times. Over 2 million people gave it a Like or a ‘Great’ (Big Like) and comments were almost exclusively very positive. It’s now officially the most watched online Dutch commercial ever. Almost 80% of these results were accomplished via organic reach / earned media. Many national and international blogs picked up the video, most notably the International Business Times (Headline: ‘KLM’s incredible Bonding Buffet at Schiphol’) and 9GAG. Each and every editorial piece was positive about KLM’s initiative, some media called it the very best Christmas campaign of the season.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

The promo and activation category celebrates creativity that brings brands to life. Entries need to demonstrate ideas that generate interaction; work where consumer participation in an activity serves to promote a product or service. This case does that in two ways: 1) We activated people at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (KLM’s home base) to participate in a live event we initiated to promote KLM. 2) We activated people worldwide to interact with the content around the event (sharing, liking, commenting).

KLM wanted to reach as many people as possible, primarily people who take one or more flights a year. People from different cultures, living all over the world. We created a heart-warming social video around a surprise buffet at Schiphol Airport. A message about unity and sharing, which tied in with both the festive season spirit and KLM’s brand purpose. A message that just about anyone in the world would like to engage with, and would like to share, at the end of a year full of turmoil. Because of KLM’s ambition to reach as many people as possible worldwide, we decided to focus our efforts on a social video people would love to share. We sent a press release to media that focus on digital trends and seeded the video on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. We concentrated all our efforts in a single week around Christmas.