When it comes to Delta Air Lines, we say we aren't in the plane business: we're in the people business. And while the people who fly on our planes are a large part of what we do, the people who help you get where you are going are just as important. In order to stand behind our promise of putting our people first, we must make sure our employees feel safe, seen and supported.
This was the task assigned to us when we were asked to launch a new wellness campaign for Delta employees that created clarity and built connections around the bevy of wellness offerings Delta provides.
In order to create clarity, we needed to create a strategic approach to succinctly communicate wellness programs across broad categories such as financial, mental, and physical wellness in order to remove the feeling of over choice that often leads to a sense of confusion when reviewing comprehensive employer benefits. However, this was just one piece of the puzzle. In order to create an authentic connection to our employees, we needed to tap into a sense of humanity in order to forge an emotional response to our offerings.
To accomplish both goals of connection and clarity, we created an emotive, anthemic launch video to announce our new wellness campaign, followed by a campaign rollout via curated design systems and guidelines that clearly and thoughtfully communicated our wellness benefits.
Enter Hello From A Better You, an authentic, forward-facing wellness campaign.
Hello From A Better You is grounded in the insight that wellness — whether physical, mental or financial — is rooted in the goal of betterment of one’s self or situation. A key feature of the campaign Hello From A Better You is that it never aims to quantify betterment. Instead, the campaign embraces where you are, no matter the starting point, and praises employees for seeking ways to create positive change in their lives.
With this insight as our guiding light, we created a narrative to launch our new campaign that focused on real life moments, big and small, physical and mental, in order to forge an emotional connection with employees, creating trust and understanding as the foundation for which we would later lay out our new wellness campaign. Marathon, our anthemic launch video, follows the lives of Delta employees as they face challenges, triumphs, highs and lows.
Serving as a metaphor for the “marathons” we all run in our own life, this narrative sets the tone for the future-facing aspect of our campaign, urging employees to lean on us, each other, and their loved ones in order to arrive at a new state of being, a better you. This emotive video premiered at a town hall session acknowledging mental health awareness month. Chief Health Officer and SVP Dr. Henry Ting followed the premier with a conversation around Delta’s dedication to wellness and the direct effect our employees' wellness has on the safety and success of our operation.
After the successful announcement of Hello From A Better You, it was time to launch the next phase of our employee health and wellness campaign. Tapping into a unique feature of Delta’s wellness programing, we leveraged Delta Wellness Champions, i.e. employees across every department of our operation, who provide access to benefit information and wellness support on a peer-to-peer level. To arm our Wellness Champions with campaign verbiage and marketing materials, we created a special Hello From A Better You wellness kit. Reminiscent of a PR press kit, these kits contained a message from our wellness leaders, inspiring language around the campaign, and campaign-branded merchandise for our champions to wear or share.
Overall this integrated campaign came together across a variety of outlets including employee and consumer-facing Delta social channels, Delta’s digital employee communication channels and intranet, direct mail, print and packaging, partner collatoral, and live event branding. Delta Marathon, the campaign's anthemic video, was even repurposed as a Delta feature film, available for viewing on in-flight entertainment screens.
Over 17,000 employees tuned into the Hello From a Better You livestream launch event and over 31,000 employees viewed the anthemic launch video, Marathon, by the end of 2023. Additional campaign materials that were shared across Delta’s social channels resulted in significantly increased employee awareness and participation in Delta wellness benefits and events, including Delta’s annual wellness walk event that garnered a record number of participants.
While these numbers alone are a marker of success, we can also attest to the impact of this campaign through the shared experiences and stories that employees have brought forward following the launch video and rollout of benefits. Employees have remarked that they could easily see themselves in the narrative of Marathon, even going as far as sharing personal anecdotes of their own wellness triumphs and challenges. It is for this reason that we are proud to have crafted an authentic health and wellness campaign that resonates in the hearts of our employees and encourages even greater exploration of Delta's many health and wellenss resources.
