About the brand
Aviasales is a website for searching flight tickerts. It’s core positioning is that Aviasales is the most effective and convenient website among all similar web resources and that only there people can find the cheapest flight tickets.
This website uses a special engine that collects all the flight options and lets you choose filters that can help you find tickets to places you need. This is the thing that makes Aviasales as convenient and accurate as possible.
This brand was founded in 2007 and gained most of it’s fame in 2018 and after.
Target audience
It’s target audience are young people approximately of age 18-40 who prefer travelling by plane. Most of them are employed and spend much time online.
Clipped background of the official Aviasales website
Aviasales in social media
This brand relies heavily on comedy for it’s advertisment. Aviasales is one of the first brands that became popular mostly for using dark and absurd humor.
This brand is mostly promoted in funny videos made either by the brand itself or by the people who were paid for advertising the brand in their online content.
TikTok memes uploaded by the official aviasales account
Aviasales gains most of it’s online popularity in such social media as TikTok, YouTube, X (ex-twitter)* and Instagram*.
*X and Instagram are banned in Russian Federation
For example, Aviasales is advertised in all sorts of YouTube channels that specialize in comedy such as «Stand-up Club № 1», «Chicken Curry» and «Labelcom».
Comedy audience screaming «Thank you, Aviasales» while comedians look at the camera. Show «Razgony», episode 26
The brand often comments on different users' videos and also encourages users commenting on the brand’s videos.
Relationship Management Theory
Relationship Management Theory helps us look at PR not as a regular advertising, but as a process of building relationships between a brand and its audience.
In our course, communication is described as a relational process. This means that the message is not important only by itself. What matters is how the audience understands it, how people react to it, and what kind of relationship is formed after that.
Through this theory, Aviasales can be seen as a brand that builds relationships with its audience through constant contact. It does not only help people search for tickets. It also regularly appears in users’ everyday lives through humor, situational jokes, offline advertising, and advertising integrations.
Aviasales airport toilet advertising. The brand uses an unexpected place to contact travelers in a stressful travel context.
This example shows that Aviasales builds relationships not only online. The brand appears at a moment when a person is already in a travel context. At the airport, people often feel stress, hurry, and tiredness. Aviasales uses humor to make this moment a little easier.
From the point of view of Relationship Management Theory, this works as an emotional connection. The brand does not simply remind people about buying tickets. It entertains them in a place where people usually do not expect advertising. Because of this, the contact feels more alive and memorable.
Humorous airport message by Aviasales. The joke reduces the distance between the brand and the audience.
An important part of relationships is trust and a recognizable style. Aviasales has been using an informal voice for a long time. It does not sound like a standard company. It speaks to the audience in the way people speak online and in memes. That is why the brand is easier to see as «one of us».
In terms of the course, memes and jokes can be seen as symbols. They are not just funny pictures. They are a language through which the brand shows that it understands the culture of its audience.
Aviasales as a recognizable humorous brand.
Here we can also see the logic of Social Exchange Theory from the course. Relationships continue when both sides receive value. Aviasales gets attention, discussions, reach, and loyalty. The audience gets entertainment, recognition, and the feeling that the brand speaks the same language as them.
That is why Aviasales memes do not look like regular advertising. They work as an exchange. The brand gives emotion, and users respond with attention, comments, and reposts.
The brand uses jokes and collaborations to stay close to its online audience.
Another important part of relationship management is consistency. Aviasales does not build contact through only one viral post. The brand has a whole communication system. It uses social media, offline advertising, a blog, integrations, and situational marketing.
This approach helps the brand stay in the user’s memory even when the person is not buying tickets. A person may not be planning a trip today, but they still see Aviasales in their information space.
1. We’re on top of the world | Emirates Airline 2. Реклама Aviasales
To sum up, through Relationship Management Theory, Aviasales memes can be seen as a tool for long-term connection with the audience. Memes do not only sell tickets. They create a communication style, cause emotions, support brand recognition, and make the brand part of everyday internet culture.
Aviasales promotes not only a service. It promotes the image of a brand that people can joke with, interact with, and return to.
Dialogue Theory
According to dialogic theory of public relations, dialogue is a process of interaction with public that is built upon equity, honesty and usefulness of information.
Aviasales is involved in public interaction mostly through their social media and their own website.
Part of a reason Aviasales is so popular is because it follows 5 principles of online dialogue:
1. Dialogic loop is mostly preserved through the company’s social media accounts. The brand answers some important (or even unserious) questions and interacts with the audience, for the most part — in an informal manner.
2. Usefulness of information — the Aviasales website has a section with important information and frequently asked questions, for example: instructions on using the website, list of documents required to buy a ticket, what to do in unexpected situations and how to contact their support.
3. Generation of return visits — the website is constantly updated, offering tickets to various destinations based on a season, providing information on the upcoming events, an opportunity to subscribe to their newsletter or even to their travelling journal.
4. Intuitiveness — Aviasales website has a user-friendly interface with a search engine, a list of links to the rest of the site as well as links to the most popular destinations, the ability to save tickets to favourites and so on.
5. Conservation of visitors — the website is not overloaded with advertisments and information, has different pages that contain the needed information as well as links to the rest of the site, so that the users can easily find what they need.
Conclusion
After this analysis we can conclude that Aviasales is highly effective both in it’s PR and it’s core features. It’s social media is always in contact with the audience, it knows it’s target audience interests and it’s websites provides all the traveling options to the users and maintains the website’s convenience.
List of literature and sources of images
