A British Original
British Airways2022
A British Original is a 2022 poster, billboard and press campaign (500+ executions) for British Airways, created by Uncommon Creative Studio.
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The line
A British Original.
Why it works
Launched in October 2022 as British Airways' first work with Uncommon Creative Studio, it took travel's dullest box-ticking question, “What is the purpose of your visit?”, and answered it more than 500 different ways. Each execution listed the standard Business and Leisure options, then ticked something truer: “To feed the social feed”, “I still love her”, “Because I have too much on my plate, none of it seafood”. Copy was written for its site and moment: digital boards shifted with location, weather, time of day and the news, a 16-sheet on the London Underground longed for warm gusts of wind not made by tube trains, and press ads played off each other across adjacent spaces. It is studied as proof that an airline can sell people rather than planes through sheer volume of sharp writing, white space and media planning. It won the Outdoor Grand Prix at Cannes in 2023, Uncommon's first, despite controversy over the airline's carbon footprint.
Techniques
- Humour Hundreds of witty answers to travel's dullest box-ticking question tick something truer than business or leisure, from feeding the social feed to unwanted seafood.
- Pathos Ticked reasons such as still loving someone sell the human feelings behind a journey rather than the planes that make it.
- Real-time and newsjacking Digital boards rewrite their copy to suit location, weather, time of day and the news, so each line feels written for that moment.
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