Fort Wayne International Airport
Asher has been a strategic partner with Fort Wayne International Airport (FWA) for over 25 years. Business travel, tourism, freight, and cargo all come through FWA’s gates. With over 750,000 passengers annually, FWA is a key vessel for commerce in the Fort Wayne area, and vital for a growing, healthy community.
In every campaign, we have supported FWA’s goals of driving enplanements and positioning the airport as a strong contender in the destination marketing sphere. In 2018, FWA came to us with an additional goal: Deepen affinity for FWA in their multigenerational audiences. In doing so, we would also support other long-term initiatives, including increasing enplanements and decreasing leakage.
The driver behind this affinity-building campaign was a series of renovation projects that the airport would be undergoing over the next few years. With this knowledge, it was critical to ensure the community valued FWA and saw its upcoming projects as essential to Fort Wayne’s economic stability and growth.
In order to tell FWA’s unique story to everyone passing through its terminals, we decided to instill the pivotal role an airport plays in human connection, physically and emotionally.
With this concept in mind, we created the tagline “Bringing Fort Wayne Closer” to reinforce how the airport is a means of bringing people to what matters most in life—the ones we love.
As the campaign concept evolved on the creative side, we created a media plan consisting of the following traditional and digital channels:
The TV spot set the tone for the campaign by featuring the intimate moments that occur between touchdown and take-off. From the parent preparing their toddler for high-flying adventure, to couples reuniting, to relieved mothers welcoming their children back from service, the airport encases treasured memories.
We exceeded our initial projections in bringing FWA’s story to the area: Our digital efforts garnered a total of 9.6 million impressions and 64,178 clicks. Additionally, our paid search efforts yielded a 25.5% click-through rate (the industry average for travel and hospitality industry is 4.68%)!
FWA has also experienced year-over-year growth for more than a decade, and part of that can be attributed to Asher’s multi-pronged media and creative approach. Asher’s marketing support has helped the airport grow its portfolio as well. FWA now partners with 4 major airlines to offer 350 destinations, including 12 non-stop flights to premier destinations such as Sarasota, Dallas, and Charlotte.
It’s been an honor to help the airport bring in passengers across generations, nurturing its place as a staple of the Fort Wayne community. We hope to continue evangelizing the importance of a community airport and its role in helping communities take to new heights.
Asher is proudly certified as a Women’s Business Enterprise by the State of Indiana. We are committed to supplier diversity by corporations and government agencies and happy to be certified to add diversity to your supply chain.
