Air Canada enRoute Rebrand: Planes, Travel + Drake

How do you transform an in-flight magazine into a compelling multi-channel brand in six months? At enRoute, we rebuilt everything from the ground up, including the editorial focus, voice and tone, aesthetic approach and digital presence. enRoute is no longer just the magazine you read at 30,000 feet – it’s a hub for new ideas and voices.

As Editor In Chief, I was responsible for setting the strategy and overseeing creative and content across all channels, including print and website launch, social media, original video. I recruited top-tier contributors, built out a cross-channel team, drew in new partners with content opportunities, and worked with sales to expand on partnership ideas and integrations.

 
 
 

Travel through Google Street View

 
 

Stories that travel.

I partnered with Air Canada executive leadership to craft a new strategic positioning and tagline. Stories travel with our readers in the literal sense – most notably at 750 km/hr on an airplane – but also through conversations and social networks. When something travels with you, it becomes part of your experience, whether that is because it resonated with you emotionally, changed your point of view, or usefully became part of your life.

Our goal was to establish enRoute as a cultural tastemaker – a travel media brand that creates moments of wonder for travellers, increases the airline’s cultural currency and becomes part of the journey, on or off the plane.

What my team delivered:

  • Brand identity

  • Verbal identity

  • Voice and Tone

  • Editorial direction

  • Art direction

  • New digital experiences

  • Video strategy

  • Content strategy

What we accomplished:

  • Increased restock numbers.

  • Increased readership through other distribution channels and grew a community of curious travellers.

  • Drove marketing awareness for Air Canada and increased conversion.

  • Won awards, grew brand affinity + recognition.

  • Attracted new partnerships + collaborators.

  • Increased ad sales and branded content opportunities.

 
 
 
 
 

The Approach

Bringing it all to life was an fun challenge. We needed to create something would inspire people to engage with our content and get excited about the possibilities of travel, while also drawing them down the rabbit hole of content.

There were a lot of things to think about:

  • Human-led experiences: enRoute showcases the world Air Canada gives travellers access to by adding a layer of humanity, wonder and purpose beyond what it means to get people from a to b.

  • Stellar contributors and collaborations: Associating with name-brand contributors as well as niche experts gives enRoute the permission to explore a variety of topics through different POVs, and helps bring in new audiences/partners for Air Canada. We collaborated with the likes of Serge Ibaka, Simu Liu, Penny Oleksiak, Tanya Taylor, Drake’s Theo Skudra, Landon Nordeman, and Priyanka Chopra.

  • Cross-platform storytelling: Creating content intentionally for different channels allowed us to meet and surpass our KPIs.

  • Join the cultural conversation: enRoute increases the airline’s relevancy by tapping into the zeitgeist (through celebrities, key cultural moments, conversations and trends). It helps to establish the airline as a global tastemaker and a brand that is part of a larger conversation. For example when Drake dropped “Tootsie Slide” we published an interview with his music video director Theo Skudra about life on the road featuring never before seen BTS photos.

 
 
 

This video has over 400k organic views and 16K likes. With little budget available to drive traffic to the content we made we leveraged interesting surprising collaborators with good stories to tell and followings of their own.

 
 

Redesign with intention

Air Canada is an icon of aviation past, present, and future. enRoute’s new clean, contemporary visual approach draws on the iconography of aviation mixed with classic Canadian graphic design.

We needed to think through about all aspects of the customer journey and beyond being beautiful, we found meaningful spaces to create Air Canada conversion, at moments when readers are most likely to click.

On social, the team connected with a global community of creators, including photographers, illustrators, actors, athletes and more, expanding the reach of the enRoute brand and creating storytelling opportunities across our digital channels. We doubled down on video content and leaned into social which is one of the most powerful travel tools.

 
 
 
 
 

Branded Content

With the rebrand we were able to collaborate with partners in interesting ways:

We worked with Chanel to profile Karl Lagerfeld’s final collection in a unique photo shoot at Niagara Falls that was an expression of both travel and fashion.

To kick off our redesign and expand on July’s “Canada” theme, we partnered with Google for a contest around Canada’s Views asking our audience to share their summer in Canada using their Google Pixel phone cameras.

We pulled Serge Ibaka in for Canada’s Best New Restaurants and highlighted one of the chefs in a playful way while jumping off of what Ibaka is known for.

 
 

Jody Sugrue