Private Jet Influencer Marketing Done Right

The other day on LinkedIn, a post about The Rock and Embraer popped into my feed and – as per usual – some inspiration struck and I wanted to talk a bit about it. There is more than meets the eye here and I wanted to showcase why this is a great example of private jet influencer marketing, and just how many ways you can use this to your advantage.

First thing’s first, this was not set up to be an ad for Embraer at all – it just happened to work out in their favor. That’s all fine and dandy because regardless of that it shows, one of the top stars in the world trusts his safety and well being flying on a Phenom 300 to get around. It’s an industry leading business-executive jet, but you most likely already knew that.

Even if this wasn’t paid for or setup by Embraer, The Rock’s Instagram Account managed to garner 2.78 million likes along with thousands of comments and is still climbing. That’s just the tip of the marketing iceberg. The marketing opportunity doesn’t stop there, so let’s see how Embraer (and anyone in this position) could take it all a step further.

Private Jet Influencer Marketing Takeaways

Ignoring The Rock for now, if I were Embraer I’d be looking to further exploit this fantastic photo op for my gain. Since it’s not their photo they’ll have to be a bit crafty, but you can always ask for permission to regram. I love this kind of impromptu and actionable marketing because it’s unexpected, and it keeps your marketing team on its toes.

Regrams, tagging and comments

When you’re a big brand in the luxury space and you already have a lot of followers, one thing is for sure – you’re going to get regrams. When you combine The Rock, beautiful flight-attendants and a sexy jet, you can safely assume many other accounts are going to repost it to their followers. Luxury brands should welcome this as it opens up the brand to potentially millions more views for free.

This photo was posted to HBO’s Ballers Instagram account, The Rock’s Facebook Page (w/ 58M fans) and dozens of luxury and lifestyle Instagram accounts.  This has resulted in millions of views, hundreds of thousands of comments and a win for everyone involved – be it intentionally or not.

Opportunity For Networking

This is where marketing in this modern social age gets fun. When you’re a big brand, influencers, journalists and bloggers are usually excited to hear from you. In this specific situation, I would start commenting (include your brand hashtag) and following everyone who shared this picture to get on their radar in a polite way. Jump right on the first notable people to contribute and engage them – slide into their DM’s or email them if they make that available.

Why?

This opens you up to a relationship with an influencer that you can continue to work with in the future. The possibilities are plentiful. If I were to put myself inside the Embraer marketing team’s shoes I’d consider the following:

1. Offer to send them exclusive content to use on their channel, which gives them the advantage over their competition. This should net you more free advertising.
2. You could ask to please tag your account in their post.
3. You’re now on their radar and your chances of getting regrams in the future goes way up.
4. If they have a large following beyond Instagram, you can work on getting your brand mentioned there.
5. When you start getting mentioned and working with them that leads to you siphoning off their followers, which you know are within your target audience.
6. Reach out to the Ballers show producers and try and work in getting your plane in scenes during the next season.

We’ve long been talking about the importance of relationship building in the luxury industry and this is the perfect example of how it can be done right. If you’re not already doing this, it might be time to start building a targeted UHNW follower base so your online efforts bring a better ROI.

Pushing This Out To Journalists & Beyond

If you wanted to take this even further, you could sit down and plan out a PR strategy to reach related and interested journalists and bloggers. Setting aside about a dozen hours for the potential to reach a few million more people online is a gamble I’d roll with in a situation like this.

The worlds of celebrity and private jets overlap nicely with travel, luxury and men’s fashion (in this case). This means there are many different journalist “niches” we can go after and I bet you could get more than a few to bite. Why should you care if this photo gets talked about on a celebrity or luxury blog? Without giving it all away, here’s what we’d do:

1. Email all related industry journalists pitching them to cover the upcoming season of Ballers as well as The Rock’s epic promotional picture.
2. Submit the original picture to Reddit, specifically /r/HBO and /r/Ballers and /r/Celebrity and /r/Entertainment to help push the viral reach of the original.
3. You could even tag “very likely to write” bloggers and journalists via Instagram comments on that exact post bringing their attention to it.
4. Share it to the Embraer social media channels (which wasn’t done tsk tsk) to again help push the viral reach of the original photo.

At the end of the day, when you’re a company of this size, you can utilize a little man power and take shots at opportunities like this and usually walk away a winner. Clever marketing in this day and age is key to getting an ROI well beyond what you paid for – especially when you’re a large brand like Embraer.

Why Go To All This Trouble?

One thing’s for sure – when you sell a very expensive product and your reach is social media, the HNW individuals are going to represent a very small number of users. That will, however, still get your brand in front of the right eyes, as well as a number of future millionaires and people with whom the HNW associate.