CALLED TO TRAVEL

According to Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, only 8 150 688 Kazakhstanis had international passports. That means at least 60.3% of the country had never been abroad. Kazakhstan is vast. But the real distance wasn’t measured in miles. Caught in the daily grind, people forgot to dream about travel.

Problem

For many people, travel didn’t just feel far away. It felt like something meant for someone else. Just showing beautiful destinations wouldn’t be enough. To inspire a first trip, we first had to make the dream personal. So we made the call personal.

Solution

Every airport in the world has a unique 3-letter IATA code. And all this time, travel was closer than it ever seemed. Freedom Travel (flight ticket booking service in Kazakhstan) turned every Kazakhstani’s name into a personal invitation to travel by asking just one question. Because everyone is called to travel.

We built a website that let everyone discover the destinations hidden in their names. Under the hood, the website was powered by a database of IATA codes for every city and airport available on Freedom Travel. We taught a custom algorithm to find and highlight those codes inside people’s names — and turn them into routes on a globe. Then it generated unique shareable templates with each person’s destinations, so everyone could post their routes on social media.

We surrounded it with a 360 campaign, turning Kazakhstanis’ names into the heroes of the campaign. Names called to people through the manifesto, through outdoor and through digital. Even underground, names gave them a reason to dream about travel. And it sparked curiosity. People searched, shared, compared — and the game went far beyond their names.

Finally, everyone who engaged with the website could unlock a $15 discount and 11% cashback on international flight tickets.

Results

300K+ unique website visitors in week one
51.6M impressions
9.8M reach

+14K new international ticket buyers in one month
300K+ international tickets sold in one month (+143.2% YoY / 2.43x growth)