Ad campaign uses wrong photo
The Diario reports that the intention was good as easyJet sought, in recent days, to promote the cheap trips that the airline offers to the islands of Madeira and Porto Santo.
This would have been just another campaign to promote the routes that the low-cost company has for the Region, if an image of a white sandy beach flanked by a green mantle of forest that anyone who knows the archipelago will quickly say is not a Madeiran landscape.
It turns out that the image is actually of the island of Corfu, the second largest island in the Greek archipelago commonly known as the Ionian Islands.
Corfu is an island almost five times the size of Madeira. More precisely, the image used by easyJet is the beach of Agios Georgios, nestled in a cove, with almost white sand and a turquoise-blue sea.
Contacted by DIÁRIO, a source from the company admitted the error and refers that the permanence of this image on social networks was very circumscribed. “easyJet admits that there was a small error in the upload of the photo that was corrected immediately, the photo was only available for the time necessary to make the change”, they refer.
These situations are not exactly new. In 2014, the same company used a photo of the parish of Ponta Delgada, in Madeira, in an action to promote connections to the city of Ponta Delgada, in the Azores.
This morning, easyJet put ‘promoted’ a new advertisement for the same campaign, but now with an image of Madeira, more precisely Ponta de São
Lourenço, with the motto “And you will want to find yourself with this treasure of the Atlantic. Discover Funchal or Porto Santo, from €14.99.”, as we can read in the description of the promotion made.
The Regional Secretariat for Tourism and Culture (SRTC) was also contacted. In response to the questions posed by the Diario, the department clarifies that “the Madeira Promotion Association (APM) has already alerted easyJet to the post in question and it has already been removed”. Regarding the promotion carried out by the airlines, the Secretariat of Eduardo Jesus realized that“in practical terms, easyJet, as well as other airlines, promote their routes in two
ways, or in partnership with the destinations (co-branding ) or organically (at their initiative)”. Whenever it is a promotion carried out in partnership with Turismo da Madeira, promotional materials “always require prior approval from the APM, in order to verify that the images and the message are aligned with the strategic objectives of the destination”.
Despite this caveat, “APM always carries out monitoring work with the aim of detecting these situations and informing its contacts to request a quick correction, as well as making itself available to assist in the verification of promotional materials, even if organic”, adds the government office.
The Diario questioned the SRTC about the amount attributed to the companies for the promotion of the destination, to which it was pointed out that “no funds are attributed to any airline for the promotion of the destination”, adding that “the contractual relationship presupposes a provision of services in the
scope of promotion and dissemination of content which is, of course, variable”.
At the moment, easyJet operates both in the Madeiran domestic market with daily connections between the two main national cities – Lisbon and Porto – and Madeira, operating more than one flight per day. Last year, connections with Porto Santo began. In this case, the flights are biweekly, both from Lisbon (Wednesday and Sunday) and from Porto (Thursday and Sunday).
As for international routes, easyJet connects Madeira directly to Berlin (Brandenburg), in Germany; Bristol, Manchester and London (Gatwick) in the United Kingdom; Lyon and Paris (Charles de Gaulle), in France; and the Italian city of Milan (Malpensa), with guaranteed routes twice a week. The connection from Porto Santo to London (Gatwick) was announced, but in September last year this operation was cancelled.
easyJet has been operating to Madeira since 2007, first with international connections only, then entering the domestic market, following the liberalization of the Lisbon – Madeira and Porto – Madeira routes.
COVID-19 in Madeira: updates can be found in an earlier post
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