AirTran ad campaign soars with nontraditional tack

Acomedian spending a month on an airliner lands at Richmond International Airport. A famous Indy car driver pulls into Richmond International Raceway.

Put 'em together and it'll be a natural for marketing.

Get the telegenic driver and the afraid-of-flying comedian to race radio-controlled toy cars on the airport tarmac -- and the media will love it.

And they did.

As the cameras clustered, microphones recorded and notepads filled up, race driver Danica Patrick wiped out endurance comedian and filmmaker Mark Malkoff in the toy-car race on the sweltering AirTran Airways parking area near the terminal at RIC last week.

"We tend to refer to these as nontraditional campaigns," explained Kelly O'Keefe managing director of Virginia Commonwealth University's Brandcenter. "They do it to generate more media attention than they could otherwise buy through traditional media."

"Of course, we got publicity," AirTran's Cynthia Tinsley-Douglas said.

"It also helped spread the word about our Wi-Fi on every flight." The airline is introducing Gogo airborne Internet service on all its airplanes.

The event produced newspaper, Web and television coverage. "If the message was [AirTran is] a player in Richmond, then it brought visibility," Richmond public-relations consultant Tom Morris said.

AirTran also was toting Malkoff during his month that he spent on airliners, flying 12 or 14 hours a day and sleeping on the parked planes.

"I have a genuine fear of flying," the 33-year-old Malkoff said yesterday. "I thought I'd stay on the plane a month to get over my fear."

Once he spent 30 days in an IKEA store. Another time he went to 171 Manhattan Starbucks stores in a day.

"This thing was just so outlandish," he said.

But bringing off this lighthearted publicity stunt required considerable coordination with notably ill-humored federal agencies, such as the Transportation Security Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration, said Tim Hanlon, with Chicago-based Aspen Marketing, which worked with the airline on the project.

Meanwhile, "Danica was in Richmond for an upcoming race," Tinsley-Douglas said, "and we scheduled Mark to be in Richmond . . . with her."

AirTran sponsors Andretti Green Racing and Danica Patrick. That led to the idea that "it would be fun for Mark to meet her," Tinsley-Douglas said, "and race toy cars with her."

Patrick "thought it was pretty neat that this guy had been living on this plane for 25 days" by the time he landed in Richmond, said Haley Moore, Patrick's spokeswoman.

"It was a great media turnout," Moore said.

On Tuesday, Malkoff landed in Atlanta, incidentally setting the Guinness World Record for most flight segments in a 30-day period.

During the tour, Malkoff took more than 130 flights covering more than 109,000 miles, visited 38 cities, posted more than 1,000 tweets on his Twitter account and updated his Facebook page more than 700 times, all while living -- and washing with baby wipes -- onboard AirTran's Boeing 717 and 737 aircraft.

"It was crazy," Malkoff said. "I don't know if I would have done it without Wi-Fi. I was on Twitter and Facebook all the time," he said, including getting new-found Internet traveling pals to pick up meals for him.

Oh, by the way, Malkoff said, "I got over my fear of flying about a week and a half into it."

Contact Peter Bacqué at (804) 649-6813 or .