Flying high with influence: How Article Onze and Turkish Airlines created an immersive and impactful travel campaign

About Article Onze & Turkish Airlines

Article Onze is a Parisian communications and influencer marketing agency specialising in travel, lifestyle, and hospitality brands. With a deep understanding of storytelling and digital influence, Article Onze crafts strategic campaigns that drive brand awareness and engagement. Turkish Airlines is the national flag carrier of Türkiye. It is one of the world's fastest-growing airlines, and is committed to providing a seamless and luxurious travel experience for its passengers.

Objectives: Showcase the Turkish Airlines experience while promoting Istanbul’s cultural richness

Having made a strategic decision to leverage influence as the foundation for renewing its communications in global markets, Turkish Airlines sought Article Onze’s expertise to build out its brand awareness strategy in France. The airline, known for its new fleet and extensive flight network—the largest in the world—wanted to enhance its brand positioning among French travelers. This included promoting the vibrant capital of Istanbul — the airline’s strategic hub — as an exciting travel destination in its own right, or as a stop-over to international destinations.

Having defined a 360-strategy to increase its brand visibility in the French market, Turkish Airlines sought Article Onze’s expertise to manage the media relations and influencer components of the strategy. 

The strategy included leveraging authentic influencer content to create a compelling narrative around the airline’s strengths. The campaign would highlight Turkish Airlines’ business class offering, emphasising the premium service, world-class gastronomy, and its unique hospitality experience.

“[The campaign strategy] was all about showcasing the full travel experience—from the moment passengers arrive at the airport, access the exclusive lounges, and experience business class service, to discovering Istanbul’s cultural richness, luxury hotels, and renowned gastronomy,” comments Article Onze Consultant Katia Wozniak.

“The idea was to use influencers to tell a compelling story about the airline, through authentic experiences and high-quality content that showcased the uniqueness of flying with Turkish Airlines.”

The campaign: Luxury travel, unique cultural experiences and immersive content

The Turkish Airlines influencer campaign would run throughout the year, and be defined along two key pillars.

The first would involve selecting influencers for exclusive individual trips, traveling business class and documenting their experiences through immersive content.

The second was to curate a luxury three-day trip to Istanbul for a group for five French influencers. This included access to Turkish Airlines premium lounge at Istanbul Airport, business class service including an immersive Istanbul city tour, staying in five-star hotels, dining at the city’s top restaurants, and a private Bosphorus yacht tour.

“We needed to find travel, lifestyle, and gastronomy-focused influencers who could align with Turkish Airlines’ values and showcase the experience in an engaging, aspirational way,” comments Article Onze’s Wozniak.

Influencers created content across Instagram and TikTok, posting reels, stories, and carousel posts that highlighted the airline’s premium offering.

“The campaign required precise coordination—content approvals, posting schedules, and reporting. Kolsquare enabled real-time tracking, ensuring every deliverable was met,” comments Wozniak.

The challenges: Selecting the right influencers and balancing campaign timelines and deliverables

One of the biggest hurdles to the successful execution of the campaign was ensuring that the chosen influencers aligned with Turkish Airlines’ brand values. Since the campaign operated on a gifting model—without direct remuneration—Article Onze needed to find creators with engaged audiences willing to collaborate and create content in exchange for an exclusive travel experience.

Another selection criteria was around creating a convivial atmosphere amongst the group selected for the three-day Istanbul trip. This meant ensuring that influencers chosen would have shared interests.

“We had a very specific audience and content focus for this campaign. Finding the right influencers while ensuring engagement and alignment with brand values was a challenge,” comments Wozniak.

“Kolsquare’s data-driven search allowed us to filter based on engagement, audience demographics, and content style, saving us countless hours of manual vetting. Kolsquare helped us identify the right influencers, manage outreach, and track deliverables seamlessly.”

Results: High-quality content and strong engagement

The campaign generated significant brand awareness and high engagement across social platforms.

Influencers were delighted with the Turkish Airlines experience, often exceeding their content posting commitments. The campaign received strong engagement rates, and delivered positive audience sentiment amongst travel enthusiasts.  

Leveraging Kolsquare’s reporting tools to deliver real-time monitoring and campaign performance evaluation, were essential to demonstrating the success of the campaign to the client.

“Kolsquare made our reporting seamless—automating data collection, gathering influencer content, and providing insights that helped showcase ROI to Turkish Airlines,” comments Katia Wozniak.

Managing an extended influencer campaign over 12 months presented valuable learnings, including the need to refine the influencer selection process to streamline targeting, and optimize campaign structuring to better balance individual and group travel activations.

Overall, the campaign successfully positioned Turkish Airlines as a premium airline option for French travelers. The synergy between Article Onze, Turkish Airlines, and Kolsquare ensured a smooth campaign execution, delivering impactful content and high audience engagement.

“At the end of the day, the client was happy, the influencers loved the experience, and the campaign delivered the visibility Turkish Airlines was looking for. A win-win for everyone,” comments Wozniak.

Want to find out how Kolsquare can help deliver win-wins for your influence campaigns? Book a demo with one of our influence experts now!