Case Study: SkyMiles To The Rescue

Client:

Delta Air Lines

Assignment:

Typically, business, travel and tourism reporters cover Delta Air Lines and its SkyMiles Program. The bigger challenge is to find ways to interject the program into mainstream media news outlets. In December 2004, a major earthquake triggered a series of tsunamis that spread throughout the Indian Ocean, killing hundreds of thousands and devastating coastal communities across Southeast Asia. Jackson Spalding immediately identified a means for Delta and the SkyMiles program’s 39 million members to aid victims of the disaster by donating miles to the relief efforts. But, we had to move quickly to tie Delta into relief efforts.

Strategy/Implementation:

The major news media were providing significant coverage of this event. Within four days we had organized and publicized a global relief effort, tapping in to partnerships with the American Red Cross and other relief organizations. We drafted a news release announcing that the SkyMiles program would donate 1 million miles and enable members to donate their personal miles to help relief efforts. We distributed the release to major news outlets and trade media. We also sent a follow-up press release one month later to recap the extraordinary number of miles donated.

Results:

The SkyMiles tsunami donation program was covered by more than 50 media outlets throughout the world, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Financial Times, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, CNN, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, National Public Radio (NPR) and various local television stations. We’ve subsequently applied this same media relations technique to garner significant coverage in the wake of the Gulf Coast hurricanes of 2005 and during the conflict in Iraq (using miles to provide transportation for injured troops).