New Zealand Aviation NEWS: Freewheeling in New Zealand

Meet ‘Jeffree’ & ‘Freeona’ - two free spirits who’re on the road trip of a lifetime and are putting a new spin on the meaning of freewheeling through New Zealand on holiday.

Jeffree is based in the North Island and Freeona hails from the South but both have a common mission - to give New Zealand visitors a free ride in turn for positive feedback about their Kiwi travel experience.

The two freebies are brand new Toyota Camry Hybrid rental cars - personalised and primed for an innovative marketing campaign by Air New Zealand.

Freeway deal
The cars are on a six-month road trip organised by the airline’s rental car division in a ‘Freeway’ deal that includes free petrol from Shell, and a Garmin-Asus A10 phone from Telecom.

People can register on line to have the use of Jeffree or Freeona for up to seven days in return for documenting and blogging their travel experience on freeway.airnzrentalcars.com.

The nationwide social media/word of mouth campaign has already had great pick up and Jeffree and Freeona have clocked up hundreds of kilometres, visiting well-known New Zealand tourist hot spots and posing for happy snaps with their lucky passengers.

Happy snaps, tracks and maps
The cars’ A10 phones have a mobile application developed specifically for the Freeway campaign and in-car Armada GPS means Jeffree and Freeona’s travels will be tracked and mapped in real time. Happy snaps will also be loaded onto the Air NZ Rental Car website and into various social media channels.

Interested travellers can register on the freeway website and choose where they ideally would like to pick Jeffree or Freeona up from.

As soon as the car is scheduled to arrive in a particular city an email is sent to those registered and the first person to reserve can take the car to any Avis location they choose.

Air NZ says it hopes that at the conclusion of the campaign, Jeffree
and Freeona will have covered the country giving people the chance to experience amazing destinations and inspire others to travel around New Zealand through the unique user-generated content.

Innovative airline
The Freeway campaign is another of Air New Zealand’s innovative campaigns.

'Forget everything you know about flying’ launched in October 2010 promotes the airline’s latest innovations in seats, interiors and service for its new B777-300s and has gained world-wide publicity particularly in relation to the Skycouch - three economy seats that fold down into a bed.

‘Nothing to Hide’ involved Air New Zealand staff presenting the in-flight safety briefing wearing nothing but body paint and at the time had nearly two million hits on YouTube, becoming the most viewed clip ever to come out of New Zealand.

Another successful ad campaign saw Air New Zealand pay people to shave their heads and wear temporary tattoos that said, "Need a change? Head down to New Zealand."

Since then the All Blacks have starred along with an elderly streaker in a rugby-focussed in-flight safety briefing that shows the airline is crazy about the national sport and highlights 2011 as the year New Zealand hosts the Rugby World Cup.

In 2010 Air New Zealand won several awards - it was named the favourite ‘long-haul leisure airline’ in the Condé Nast Readers’ Choice Travel Awards 2010. It also picked up the Air Transport World ‘Airline of the Year’ award (considered the Oscars of the aviation industry), two Skytrax accolades and won ‘Best Airline’ at the 2010 Which? magazine awards.

NEHA JAIN

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