New Spot for Heathrow Captures the Bliss That Comes With Setting Up an Out-of-Office Message

Havas London, the British-based agency behind Heathrow’s now-famous ads featuring a pair of bears returning home for the holidays, created this new spot for London’s landmark airport. In it, a woman drafts her out-of-office message while sitting at her gate at Heathrow. As she finishes, she laughs with her two children before the family giddily gets up to board their plane.

“Heathrow is just as much about those longed-for week-long summer holidays as it is about weekday business trips and round-the-world epics,” Lynsey Atkin, creative director at Havas London, told Adweek of the spot. “We wanted to celebrate the small moments that have great significance when it comes to our precious time away with those we love. Setting an out of office is one such moment, where the world of work is packed away and our focus shifts to the really important people in our lives.”

The ad’s approach is simple: A reminder of the feeling that comes along with the seemingly-minute, yet instantly relief-inducing act of setting up an out-of-office message before heading out on an awaited-for vacation. Atkin says that going into the campaign, the Havas London team wanted “to tell a seemingly small story that had big resonance.”

To make the family interactions feel natural and relatable, the spot’s director, Tom Green of Stink Films, worked with the cast for two days of shooting “to allow for natural action and dialogue that feels utterly relatable and part of the fabric of family interactions that play out every single day across Heathrow,” Atkin said. 

The campaign aims to highlight Heathrow’s “Closer” tagline, meant to showcase “the airport’s ability to bring people closer together for special moments every day,” according to a release. Beyond the video spot, also included in the campaign are several out-of-home ads featuring images shot by Christopher Anderson. In these ads, close-up photos of different faces are featured. At the bottom of each image, there’s a personalized out-of-office message.

“At its very heart Heathrow is about bringing people Closer to each other,” Atkin said of the message behind the Closer tagline. “And in a time when that seems increasingly rare, it feels fitting that a place that knows the power and emotion of being together should be flying the flag for it, however big or small.”

Credits

Project name: Out of Office
Client: Heathrow Airport Limited: Simon Eastburn – Director of Marketing, Modupe Adeboye – Senior Marketing and Brand Manager, Kellie Heath – Campaign Marketing Manager, Silvia Cardinale – Campaign Marketing Manager
Creative agency: Havas London
ECD: Ben Mooge
Creative Director: Lynsey Atkin
Creative: Tom Manning
Account team: Caroline Saunders, Oliver Lester, Claire Petzal, Naomi Hollowday
Agency producer (film): Kiri Carch, Adrianne Godfrey
Agency producer (print): Hatty Middleton
Planner: Clare Phayer
Media agency: Carat
Media planner: Hanna Puggaard
Production company: Stink Films
Producer: Ray Leakey
Director: Tom Green
DoP: James Laxton
Editor: James Forbes-Robertson at Whitehouse Post
Post-production: The Mill
Soundtrack composer: Roots Manuva ‘Fighting For’
Audio post-production: Jon Clarke at Factory