RPA and Southwest Creative
Southwest Airlines named RPA its Digital AOR in 2016. Below you’ll find examples of our work for SWA, and some of our other clients.
Southwest Sizzle
Time to Get Away — Dynamic Digital Billboards
Using real time traffic data, we were able to compare drive times from Fort Lauderdale to local vacation spots vs. our short flight times to international destinations. In addition, we retargeted people who saw the billboard with programmatic digital display and social ads to facilitate booking a flight.
Interactive Experience for Global Business Travelers
We created an interactive experience for Southwest Airlines, targeting corporate travel decision-makers who were attending the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) Convention in San Diego. The digital experience served as a centerpiece to Southwest Airlines’ presence at the convention by dynamically visualizing the airline’s 4,000+ weekday departures within its network of 99 U.S. and 10 international destinations.
Local Flavor Through Market-Centric Advertising
Southwest Airlines wanted to get young people and general travelers who fly with their competitors to seek out and book on Southwest instead. So we developed a cohesive body of creative that speaks to travelers in 12 different markets across the U.S. — each with its own unique local flavor, and each delivering its own unique proposition. These fun and colorful assets, designed to inspire travel, showcase our service offerings across primary digital and social channels.
A Data-Driven Approach to International Travel
Since not all flyers are alike—and because we wanted to promote different destinations based on point of origin—we created a multitude of messages to reach our soon-to-be adventurers across 17 individual markets. As the first Southwest partner to build their dynamic creative using Sizmek’s platform, we were able to produce a robust set of digital and social ads in-house. All of the units created were personalized to a specific market and designed with colorful, eye-catching visuals and a little tropical flavor to draw travelers in, showing them what exciting destinations were at their fingertips. It’s look, book, and toes in the sand.
Honda
Project Courage
"Project Courage" is a powerful initiative from Honda that brings a little joy to kids staying in the hospital. It’s been well-documented that stress and anxiety can detract from the healing process. The Honda Shogo is a small vehicle designed to reduce anxiety, and it’s built around the specialized needs of young patients. Instead of using a wheelchair, kids can drive themselves to their treatment or procedure in a small electric Honda. It’s one small way Honda is brightening the lives of kids on their road to recovery.
Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation
The Imaginary Friend Society
After a diagnosis, the cancer process gets complicated for kids. Fighting cancer is hard enough, but the terminology, doctor’s visits, and procedures make it even harder. We learned that many kids who survived cancer relied on an imaginary friend as a coping mechanism during long hospital stays.
This coping mechanism became our inspiration for the Imaginary Friend Society, a fictitious group of characters that appears in 20 animated films, designed to help kids understand and cope with the hardships of a cancer diagnosis and its treatment. These films cover everything from “What is an MRI?” to “Blood Transfusions” and “Feeling Sad.” We also developed an interactive experience for the siblings of cancer patients to better understand their feelings during this difficult time.
Farmers Insurance
Punching Above Our Weight
When Farmers first came to RPA in 2010, their brand was so invisible that State Farm actually got more credit for the advertising Farmers was running. Not ideal.
In fact, their #1 brand attribute was literally “dull and boring.” Farmers wasn’t the cheapest or the most high-tech. They relied on agents, in a time when lots of folks preferred a website or an app. They weren’t fundamentally differentiated at all. And they were (and still are) massively outspent by the competition. With GEICO and Progressive spending in the billions, and State Farm and Allstate close behind, the race was to simply buy awareness through massive media presence — and we didn’t have nearly their budget.
Since we couldn’t be louder, we needed to be smarter.
Solution: Owning the power of smart
Rather than merely celebrating the know-how of our agents, we flipped the script and led with a message of empowerment. By cultivating the smartest agents, we make our customers smarter. To bring this idea to life, we created a place: the University of Farmers. A legendary institution that embodies our brand promise: “We know a thing or two, because we’ve seen a thing or two.”
Results: We helped Farmers Insurance become iconic.
The campaign has been running for over a decade — and continues to get stronger. Our recent work has some of the highest recall in the history of the campaign. And we have the lowest cost per point of communication effectiveness in the category — by a wide margin. In 2020, we won a Gold Effie Award for Sustained Success.
