At first, I didn't want to write about this, then i thought, might as well write my opinion from myself and revisit it in a few years to see if my stance remain the same.
Marketing, in its essence its finding a way to sell your product or service in a creative way based on your core competencies & reason to believe. That is usually how strategies are written and ads are made
However, in advertising, there is a concept called shock value, or disruption, which is what most clients try to do these days because of the mass influx of information that we receive everyday through our mobile phones.
This is what Flyadeal was attempting to do, disruption, shock value, Great! mission accomplished!
but what comes next is the real problem, at first, many believed that this is actually a new service (since the consumer just absorbs the information and is not familiar with whats safe & whats not).
the reason is that in the first video they actually brought real employees and real managers to make it believable (Or was it?) from measuring the lower cabins to the operations manager saying that you need to go to the toilet before getting on board!
After that many people started exchanging jokes & memes laughing at the company & not laughing with it.
this creates a loss of credibility, since its not only campaign but launching a new product behind it (luggage seat) and they just did it for the sake of disruption!
Disrupt all you want but not on the expense of lying to consumer about a allegedly new product.
& until this day, it feels like its not really clear if they lied or joked or they were really contemplating doing it.
one last point to mention, i know that the campaign is based on economical seating with low prices and that's the campaign but going all this length to create disruption on the basis of creating mistrust with the company is a big price to pay, in my opinion!
I guess the lesson to any brand is be real, respect your consumer,play on your competencies, & deliver good value for your consumer.
Have a nice day !