During Sunday’s Academy Awards broadcast, Avion Rewards debuted a new campaign that highlights expanded benefits for its newest membership level.

The new level – Avion Select – is free for all Canadians to join and its arrival is featured in the “Leave Limits Behind” campaign, which was designed to underline ideas of flexibility and choice that Avion Rewards wants to associate with its program.

The campaign was also developed to make the benefits of the program feel tangible, highlighting what users can earn through the program. The creative work reveals choices between two options that would go better together than apart. The work underlines how consumers shouldn’t face so many limits within what they can choose to access through loyalty programs. 

“We really [wanted] to demonstrate ‘Why do I have to choose between getting points and cash back and savings in one program? Why do I have to be limited with only being able to earn at a set number of stores or only being able to redeem for a very limited set of merchandise?’” says Avion Rewards vice president of marketing Carolyn Hynds.

When Avion Rewards launched in 2022 with RBC clients, its marketing was more in line with the bank’s own creative, reflecting its brand standards. With this new campaign, Avion is trying to differentiate further as a fresh loyalty program, with a different tone from RBC. 

“On this campaign, it’s really important for us to break through and make the message clear that it’s open to everyone, you don’t need to have a banking product. If it was too similar to the marketing we’ve done to date, it wouldn’t have necessarily gotten that message through,” Hynds says.

The main challenge that Avion faces is breaking through loyalty fatigue that many consumers have. There’s many different loyalty programs available to consumers, and Hynds says it’s important to demonstrate the value and breadth Avion offers to overcome that fatigue.

The national, fully integrated creative is a multi-million-dollar mass media campaign across TV, online video, in-branch video, display, social media, sponsored content, SEM, performance, PR and owned channels. It includes 30- and 15-second TV spots that are set to run across traditional and digital platforms. The campaign’s target audience is people aged 25 to 48 years old, regardless of where they bank.

The Avion Rewards team also worked with nine content creators to develop content that highlights the program’s benefits. BBDO handled creative strategy and execution of the campaign, with Initiative looking after media planning across TV, digital and social. BlueSky Communications offered PR support, as well as a content creator strategy via Meta and TikTok, while Salt XC oversaw social media strategy and execution.