After a series of high-pro­file YouTube cam­paigns, fea­tur­ing glob­al sports stars includ­ing Lionel Mes­si, Kobe Bryant, and Tiger Woods, Turk­ish Air­lines has turned to the video shar­ing plat­for­m’s inter­nal tal­ent for their lat­est cam­paign. Bring­ing togeth­er the most pop­u­lar YouTube tal­ent in a col­lab­o­ra­tive #For­tune­Trav­eller vlog­ging event, the cam­paign is set to win glob­al reach via the mas­sive social fol­low­ings of enlist­ed vlog­gers.

In a few short years, Turk­ish Air­lines has devel­oped a rep­u­ta­tion for cre­at­ing excep­tion­al brand­ed video con­tent on YouTube. By far, their most trav­elled piece of con­tent has been the ‘Kobe vs. Mes­si’ videos, both of which have amassed more than 100 mil­lion views.

Here’s the first of the two videos:

While sign­ing up two of the world’s biggest sports stars was undoubt­ed­ly a expen­sive move, the per­for­mance of the videos builds aware­ness and reas­sur­ance among a world­wide audi­ence of con­sumers, exact­ly the kind of mar­ket­ing push that is cru­cial to an inter­na­tion­al air­line.

It’s led to Turk­ish Air­lines win­ning a lead­ing 29.5 per­cent share of over­all social media shares in the Trav­el and Trans­port ver­ti­cal on YouTube.

The cam­paign built upon pre­vi­ous efforts by the air­line to uti­lize glob­al sports stars to cre­ate com­pelling and share­able con­tent, which as the fol­low­ing video fea­tur­ing Tiger Woods shows, nev­er strays far from the air­line’s lux­u­ry and lib­er­at­ing brand iden­ti­ty.

Again win­ning a siz­able audi­ence, Turk­ish Air­lines’ activ­i­ty on the chan­nel serves as a great case study of YouTube best prac­tice for brands, and the scope of what can be achieved when brands com­mit to big-bud­get dig­i­tal video con­tent.

#FortuneTraveller

Today it was announced that Turk­ish Air­lines, in part­ner­ship with cloud-based glob­al video dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work, Right­ster, will see the air­line send a group of the biggest stars on YouTube in a co-ordi­nat­ed, glob­al trav­el vlog­ging cam­paign.

Under the #For­tune­Trav­eller ini­tia­tive, the project will fly YouTube stars such as Devin Super­tramp, the U.S.-based video­g­ra­ph­er with a fol­low­ing of more than 2.5 mil­lion sub­scribers, and Dami­an Wal­ters, the UK stunt­man with more than 475,000 sub­scribers, to Istan­bul with a pass­port, a cam­era, and min­i­mal pos­ses­sions.

Once in Istan­bul the stars will meet and togeth­er will take part in a tra­di­tion­al Turk­ish for­tune telling event, where they will learn their trav­el­ling for­tunes. The YouTu­bers will then be sent to one of Turk­ish Air­lines’ 260 des­ti­na­tions (inci­den­tal­ly, the air­line flies to more des­ti­na­tions around the world than any oth­er air­line) and the vlog­gers will record all their expe­ri­ences from Istan­bul to their cho­sen des­ti­na­tions.

Reaching Global Audiences Via Digital Talent

The ini­tia­tive will bring togeth­er tal­ent from 10 coun­tries, cov­er­ing all the major glob­al YouTube net­works and Turk­ish air­lines major mar­kets.

In a press state­ment, Neset Dere­li, Turk­ish Air­lines’ inter­ac­tive mar­ket­ing man­ag­er, said:

“This part­ner­ship show­cas­es the increas­ing impor­tance of glob­al YouTube net­work part­ner­ships deliv­er­ing long-term suc­cess for brands on the plat­form. Bring­ing togeth­er cre­ators from mul­ti­ple net­works and uti­liz­ing Rightster’s exper­tise in cre­at­ing brand­ed con­tent will mean we have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to reach a tru­ly glob­al audi­ence.”

And while the move does depart from the use of high-pro­file sports stars as a means of secur­ing audi­ences and engage­ment, if any­thing, the cam­paign has even greater poten­tial to reach glob­al audi­ences. Sub­scriber fol­low­ings for YouTube stars can num­ber into the mil­lions, with indi­vid­ual videos often gain­ing huge num­bers of views.

Turk­ish Air­lines’ cam­paign speaks of a brand that both under­stands, and feels com­fort­able tak­ing risks on YouTube, and recent stud­ies indi­cate that as a trav­el brand par­tic­u­lar­ly, the air­line has every­thing to gain.

The #For­tune­Trav­eller cam­paign will run until the end of Novem­ber and can be fol­lowed on the offi­cial Turk­ish Air­lines YouTube chan­nel.

Should oth­er brands be fol­low­ing Turk­ish Air­lines exam­ple, uti­liz­ing the best of YouTube’s tal­ent?