In an effort to prove that it is indeed ‘Going Further,’ Canadian Airlines International has extended its latest brand building message with a series of large space ads in daily newspapers.

Although the centrepiece of the launch is a 60-second television commercial which stresses the commitment of Canadian’s 16,000 employee-owners, it is the newspaper advertising which spells out the extent of that commitment and explains what that means to the airline’s customers.

Aubrey Singer, a senior copywriter at TBWA Chiat/Day, the agency responsible for Canadian’s advertising in the English market, says while it is true television gives consumers an overall impression of the brand, ‘the hardcore reality, the proof, happens in print.’

The launch ad, which appeared Sept. 18 in The Financial Post, The Globe and Mail, and eight local market daily newspapers across Canada – The Calgary Herald, The Calgary Sun, The Edmonton Journal, The Ottawa Citizen, The Toronto Star, The Vancouver Sun, The Vancouver Province and The Winnipeg Free Press – recalls that two years ago, Canadian’s employees became shareholders in the company as part of its financial restructuring.

Under the headline, ‘The ink has dried. And this is what it says,’ the copy goes on to say that Canadian’s employees are dedicated to going further, and as part of that commitment, the airline is launching services to Asia, Latin America and Europe, and introducing a standard of business class called Club Empress.

The copy also says that Canadian Airlines can fly its passengers to more than 500 destinations globally, through its partnerships with seven international airlines.

The ad concludes by inviting readers to call the airline toll-free, or visit its site on the World Wide Web, an updated version of which made its debut on the same day.

Richard Peter, a writer/ researcher at the Calgary-based airline, says the newspaper portion of the Going Further campaign will gradually evolve from brand building to more tactical advertising.

The double-page spread used in the launch, for example, was followed a week later with a full-page ad devoted to Canadian’s destinations.

That execution, in turn, is to be followed by page-dominant, tactical ads that will concentrate on Club Empress, the Asian service, and, in 1996, the introduction of new routes.

Lorraine Hughes, media director at TBWA Chiat/Day, says the decision to use newspapers as a primary medium was made for several reasons, chief among them the fact that newspapers reach the airline’s target market, a group Canadian defines as ‘seasoned’ travellers.

(Hughes says the term refers largely to business travellers, but includes leisure travellers.)

According to NADbank ’94, the most recent readership survey commissioned by the Newspaper Marketing Bureau, business travellers who travel by air are considerably more likely to read newspapers than the average adult.

For example, the survey found that while 67.04% of adults 18+ read a weekday edition of a daily newspaper, 74.47% of adults who had travelled by air 11 or more times over the past year did so.

In the same way, while 76.36% of adults 18+ read a weekend daily newspaper, 86.39% of adult business travellers who had travelled by air 11 or more times over the past year did so.

As well, Hughes says, newspapers offer a credible editorial environment in which to make ‘newsworthy’ announcements, and they are published daily, an important consideration for a company wanting to get its message out quickly.

‘We can hit the street the first day of the first week of the campaign, so, for immediacy, [newspapers are] absolutely critical,’ Hughes says.

Michelle Kitchen, group account director at TBWA Chiat/Day, agrees newspapers were a logical choice, in part because business travellers tend to be light to medium users of television.

‘It guaranteed our reach of the business traveller,’ Kitchen says.

‘If we didn’t reach them in television, we would sure as heck reach them using newspaper,’ she says.

Kitchen says the airline also had a big story to tell, and the agency felt the story could best be told to consumers when they were in the mood to read.

As for the media strategy, Kitchen says the agency ‘bought a lot of space and bought some big space’ in order to position Canadian as a global carrier.

While it is true Canadian is the No. 2 airline in Canada in terms of size, Kitchen says the airline does not wish to be perceived as anything other than the international carrier it is.

‘We also felt that as it was the launch of the campaign, we wanted it to look like a launch – to look big, to look newsworthy,’ she says.

Asked whether she believes newspapers are underused as an advertising medium, Hughes says, no, that she sees a lot of big campaigns in newspapers, particularly in the telecommunications and software categories.

Still, Hughes believes creative and media people alike could stand to be more open-minded with respect to the medium.

‘I think it’s a matter of thinking a bit more creatively in terms of how to use the medium, and I know a lot of newspaper organizations, like Aditus (the advertising sales arm of Southam Newspaper Group), have done a lot of work in terms of coming around to agencies and really trying to open our minds in terms of not just using predictable advertising formats,’ she says.

‘They are becoming a lot more flexible in terms of new and different ideas, whether it is flexform advertising, or wraparounds – really different things creatively.’

‘They are also spending a lot of time now developing special features and supplements that are appropriate to different advertisers.’

Research and flexibility aside, Hughes says for the Going Further campaign, newspapers were ‘an obvious and right fit.’

‘There’s always a qualitative aspect to the decision-making process, and newspapers made the cut across a lot of different criteria,’ she says.