Sao Paulo chatter wins Cannes award for Emirates

Emirates’ Airline was recognised for its digital advertising ability earlier this year after the airline won with three Cannes Lions at the 55th International Advertising Festival.

The creative wing of the carrier, along with London based advertising agency Lean Mean Fighting Machine, picked up a gold award for its ‘Nonstop Fernando’ campaign, a silver accolade for a brand campaign and a bronze for ‘Nonstop Fernando’ in the advertising category.

The ‘Non stop Fernando’ campaign revolved around a Brazilian man talking non stop about his home city of Sao Paulo to promote Emirates’ first push into South America. The lively character spoke for 14 hours 40 minutes - the same length as the flight from Dubai to Sao Paulo.

The brand campaign involved online video banners which allowed viewers to ‘step’ into moving footage and experience first hand the destination they were seeing. The banners ran on numerous websites in the UK, UAE and Australia and were seen by millions.

Mike Simon, Emirates’ divisional senior vice president, Corporate Communications said, “These awards represent the best of the best in advertising so we are particularly pleased with this international endorsement. It is also further evidence that we are very much on course, online. We work extremely hard at Emirates to do things differently and these video banners provide a real journey of discovery for users. As for Fernando, well - he speaks volumes about what we’re about.”

The International Advertising Festival in Cannes was the largest gathering of worldwide advertising professionals and advertisers. This year, more than 9,500 registered delegates from 85 countries attended, along with thousands of visitors. Known as Cannes Lions, the event was inspired by the International Film Festival which has been staged in Cannes since the 1940s.

Cannes will become even more accessible via the Emirates’ network as of December 1 when flights between the nearest city of Nice and Dubai become non stop five times a week. The current three flights a week from Nice, each with a stop in Rome, will change to five weekly non stop services. Passengers from the south of France will be able to take advantage of connections to many of the destinations on the unfolding Emirates’ network. Emirates will be the only airline offering such regular connecting flights linking southern France with the Middle East, Asia and the Far East.

The flights will be operated by an Airbus A330-200 aircraft in a three class configuration of 12 seats in first class, 42 seats in business class and 183 seats in economy class.

Emirates Airline started a six times weekly service between Dubai and Sao Paulo on October last year, making history at the time as it was the first time a carrier had operated a non stop flight between the Middle East and South America.

Sao Paulo is home to 12 million Arabs and 1.5 million Muslims, and serves as the gateway to South America in terms of trade with its top five foreign investors listed as the US, the Netherlands, the Cayman Island, Switzerland and Spain respectively.

Brazil was the 60th country and Sao Paulo the 94th destination in the airline’s expanding network.

Emirates Holidays, the tour operating arm of the airline offers holiday packages to Brazil encompassing Sao Paulo as well as Rio de Janeiro, as well as tours to natural attractions such as Rio’s Corcovado Mountain, the waterfalls of Iguaçu and areas within the Amazon rainforest.