More than half of air passengers have thought about buying property in the country they’ve just visited
So where does Ink come in? Behavioural scientists often differentiate between “hot state” thinking – where high levels of emotion impact on the rational process of making a decision, compelling consumers to act on their visceral impulses – and “cold state” thinking, when people experience low levels of arousal or emotion and tend to make more rational decisions.
According to Ink’s own research, 52% of recent flyers say they’ve thought about buying property in the country they’ve just visited so, if you’re targeting tourists, inflight magazines are a logical a choice if real estate advertisers want to strike while the state is still hot.
Take the Spanish company, Costa Weflen Group (CWG), as an example. They are a fast-growing, full-service real estate company headquartered in Torravieja, in South East Spain. CWG was founded by Hilde Jeanette Weflen, who moved to the Costa Blanca from Norway in 1998, working firstly as a tourist guide and then as a location manager. Two jobs which gave her an intimate knowledge of the local area.
Scandinavians are second only to Brits among foreigners buying Spanish property
With Scandinavians second only to the British among foreigners buying Spanish property, CWG had identified this audience as a key source of new business. On hearing that Norwegian flew over 1m passengers in and out of Alicante airport last year – accounting for every second Scandinavian arrival – using its inflight magazine, n by Norwegian, to target visitors from this part of Northern Europe made perfect commercial sense.
After working with CWG to create a bespoke advertorial promotion and running a display ad a few pages before the promotion to act as a teaser, we received an excited text message from Hilde Jeanette Weflen, saying she had been contacted by a passenger who had seen the magazine ad, torn it out and was currently in the process of completing on the €800,000 purchase of one of her properties. Just a month or so later we received another messaging saying she had sold another one, this time for €600,000…netting her a running total of €1.4m!! Not a bad return on investment.
This is by no means an isolated example. I have also been told of a couple from Southern California who had recently visited Florida. Apparently, after seeing the 165 miles of waterways in and around Fort Lauderdale, they were intrigued by the idea of living on the water. Flying home with United Airlines, they opened their copy of Rhapsody magazine – United’s premium magazine for business and 1st class passengers – and saw an ad for Riva condos, a development nestling on the bank of the idyllic Middle River that was currently under construction. Their fancy duly tickled, on landing the couple took the ad and called Riva’s office to enquire about availability. They promptly emailed Riva a signed reservation for more than $1 million and wired the deposit the very next day. That’s a million dollar condo bought off-plan for the price of a single ad in an inflight magazine!