Video Producer Using Facebook for New Restaurant Marketing Program at Atlanta Airport

As both new and aging terminals across the world contemplate how to market their improved food and beverage options, a video producer at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport will add another perspective to personalized airport marketing later this year.

Launching in November, Bread N’ Butter Productions, a video content marketing company based in Atlanta, will introduce a new video marketing program for food and beverage offerings at the airport. The program is two-pronged: the first involves sending targeted notifications to travelers’ smartphones using Facebook Places for videos ranging from one to two minutes in length about airport restaurants. The second entails reaching travelers through a microsite when they access the public Wi-Fi network available throughout all terminals.

The latter won’t contain any personalization, at least for now, but Facebook Places, the social network’s geo-targeting arm, will segment between business and leisure travelers and serve video content that’s specifically relevant to each traveler.

Bread N’ Butter will spearhead all technology components of the program, including Facebook Places, with Hartsfield-Jackson not supplying the technology components. Bread N’ Butter has worked with Las Vegas Sands and other destination marketing organizations on similar video marketing programs.

Facebook’s ad platform, Power Editor, will use Facebook Places to push out video content to travelers based on what they’ve liked on Facebook, such as things related to healthy meals, wellness experiences or creative cocktails. If they’re flying for business, those travelers will see videos for restaurants the airport deems best-suited for those kinds of trips. A Wi-Fi connection isn’t required to see the targeted videos since they’re location-based and get pushed over cellular data as well and videos will play directly within Facebook.

This is where individual targeting begins. A traveler waiting for his or her connecting flight who’s scrolling through Facebook and interested in local food, for example, might see a headline, “Why Hartsfield-Jackson’s ‘One Flew South’ was named One Of The Best Places To Eat NOW by GQ Magazine” and could watch an accompanying video on One Flew South. Another traveler may see a video for a salad restaurant in the airport because of their indicated interests in healthy foods or salads.

“Part of our capabilities and plans moving forward is to create an aggregate stand alone website dedicated to airport dining, searchable by airport and serving as a distribution platform for all videos we create for major airports,” said Cody Hicks, the company’s president.

If a traveler doesn’t use Facebook or isn’t accessing it at the airport, they can alternatively see the videos by agreeing to Hartsfield-Jackson’s Wi-Fi terms and conditions on their smartphones, tablets or laptops. Doing so will push them to the airport’s mobile site which will feature a searchable database microsite for videos of the more than 40 restaurants filmed for the program.

“Increased customer awareness of the various shops and restaurants at Hartsfield-Jackson will lead to higher customer satisfaction, and, ultimately, increased revenues for our concessionaires,” said Andy Gobeil, a spokesperson for the airport. “Our social media team will also highlight and link to video segments of the program when we roll it out.”

Why Not Beacons?

Targeted and personalized marketing at airports is in its infancy since most are either still experimenting with beacon technology or haven’t dabbled with personalized marketing yet.

Miami and Hong Kong International Airports are two prominent examples that have piloted beacons, with Hong Kong’s beacons getting a lot of attention from airport vendors since they were introduced a few months ago.

Gobeil didn’t comment on why the airport’s taking a different path towards personalized marketing when beacons seem to be the talk of airports and even some hotels like Marriott. Beacons also go hand-in-hand with Facebook Places as some hotels have used them to beam personalized, user-generated content from the platform to guests.

Hicks added that distributing quality video is feasible using several kinds of technologies and that value-added content remains central while technology constantly changes, along with the debate on how to use it. He also said Bread N’ Butter has a contract to do a similar program with a major cruise line and is in talks with other large U.S. airports too.