Delta Air and Coke Pulls Plug on Fizzled Flight Cabin Campaign

There are times one can be cheeky with marketing; the recently fizzled flight cabin campaign for Delta Air and Coca-Cola is not one of them. The idea: get flight passengers on certain Delta Air to share their contact details with their ‘plane crushes’.

Simply put, the napkins sport Coca-Cola labels and words of encouragement to live a little. Perhaps, make some friends even. After all, the message ends with the words: “Hey…you never know.”

Passengers on Delta Air aircraft who came across these napkins felt it necessary to critique the idea; of course, they did not believe they needed to be kind at all.

Here are some of the tweets that immediately went viral:

Hey @Delta and @CocaCola These napkins are creepy AF. Pretty sure no one appreciated unsolicited phone numbers in the ‘good old days’ and they sure as heck don’t want the number of someone who has been gawking at them on a plane for hours today. Not a good look. pic.twitter.com/PJAiurFRMh
— ducksauz (@ducksauz) January 21, 2019

@Delta thanks for helping us #single out! can you ship me a box of these napkins so i can use them everywhere, while i sip my @CocaCola? Pretty please?! ?? pic.twitter.com/MiucrGbVbS
— Payal Lohia (@payalofthoughts) February 4, 2019

Napkins received from @Delta on Wednesday flight seem unintentionally creepy, especially after reading the smaller print. Swing and a miss, @DietCoke. pic.twitter.com/eKaMruqqUR
— Mike J (@MJJoe) February 1, 2019

These and other social media postings confirms that this cheeky campaign didn’t really take flight with the passengers. After that, it didn’t take long for the whole thing to blow up and send the two brands scrambling to address the problem.

According to CNN, both companies are now apologising for this marketing faux pas. Official messages from Coca-Cola and Delta Air appear one-week after cancelling their fizzled flight cabin campaign.

The messages from both brands are as below:

We sincerely apologize to anyone we may have offended. We worked with our partners at Delta to begin removing the napkins last month.
Coca-Cola

We rotate Coke products regularly on our aircraft as part of our brand partnership; but missed the mark with this one. We are sorry for that and began removing the napkins from our aircraft in January.
Delta Air

Nice and quick, though such a scenario could have been avoided completely.

Even if this fizzled flight cabin campaign only appears within US airspace, let this be a lesson to the rest; in other words, one cannot be inappropriate with personal space, especially if it is about sharing one’s private details.

At least on the home front, Coca-Cola is doing it right with its 2019 Chinese New Year campaign. It’s a nice touch that the design execution is done up with a classy look.

Text by: Victor Yap