Icelandair: confronting AI scepticism to drive a 67% surge in revenue

22%

increase in remarketing conversion rate

864%

increase in platform ROAS

Leading with authenticity to deliver compounding growth for Icelandair

Launch and Icelandair’s collaboration on the ‘This Is Not AI campaign’ is a masterclass in scaling performance without losing efficiency

The challenge

When Launch was appointed to grow Icelandair’s digital performance across key European and North American markets our qualitative research uncovered a startling commercial blocker: transatlantic travellers were dismissing Iceland’s landscapes as AI-generated. Audiences saw the ads but didn’t trust the destination enough to book. Without that trust, a performance plateau loomed. Launch and Icelandair embarked on a full-funnel strategy to win the hearts and minds of transatlantic customers.

Our approach

We collaborated on a new campaign: This Is Not AI (TINA) which called out the doubt directly, using self-aware creative and humour to rebuild trust and invite audiences to look closer. Video formed a linchpin for the campaign, building reach and memorability across Youtube and Meta. The campaign was supported by a remarketing layer that converted engaged audiences lower in the funnel. Ultimately our goal was to build a long-term awareness and intent-building platform, not a short-term conversion push.

The creative

When Launch’s audience research unearthed the kernel of truth that Icelandair’s target audience didn’t trust the images of Iceland, a whole campaign was born. Icelandair developed ‘Expedition Iceland’ in partnership with Danish social-first agency Kubbco, and Icelandic agency Hvíta húsið. We took the resulting creative assets and used them to fuel a highly effective full-funnel performance marketing strategy.

The results

This campaign demonstrates what a full-funnel strategy should deliver: awareness that earns trust, trust that drives intent, and intent that converts efficiently at scale. By earning trust at the top of the funnel through honest, human creative we fundamentally changed the quality of the audience entering the funnel, making every pound spent on remarketing work twice as hard.

Lift in Meta revenue

Meta revenue grew 67% compared to the previous period.

Remarketing success

The 22% improvement in remarketing conversion rates was driven by higher-quality audiences entering the funnel.

Post saves shoot up

Post saves (a proxy for genuine audience interest) rose 42%.

Award nominations

The campaign has been nominated for a Performance Marketing Award and a Shorty (results pending) as well as taking home a Clio.

What we were able to do with Launch's help is identify a problem in the market and provide customers with a solution through fun advertising. That's the dream when you're going into marketing. They did a great job of helping us spend our money efficiently. It was good to know that we were getting the best return on our investment that we could.

Bradley Wigsten Marketing Manager - North America, Icelandair