CLIENT: Premium airline brand, social content series
GEOGRAPHY: Singapore, Southeast Asia, Australia, UK
AUDIENCE: Frequent travellers 25 to 40 who consume a lot of travel content, produce some of it, and are quietly aware that the two experiences have almost nothing to do with each other. They have photographed a plane window. They were not having a good time when they did it. They posted it anyway.
PURPOSE: Build a branded entertainment series that makes the airline feel like it genuinely understands what travel actually involves, which is more than the highlight reel and considerably funnier.
BRIEF: Every airline produces the same content. Aspirational destinations. Beautiful cabins. People arriving somewhere looking like they slept the entire flight and woke up with good skin. Nobody believes any of it, which has not stopped anyone from making more of it. The brief was to make something different. A recurring series built around the gap between the travel content people produce and the travel experience they’re actually having. Relatable, self-aware, and funny in the specific way that only works when something is true.
TONE: Dry. Self-deprecating. The travel equivalent of someone who has been everywhere and is honest about what that involves. No pretending. No golden hour. No acoustic guitar.
MY ROLE: Series concept, character development, episode scripts, social rollout, caption series.
FORMAT: Instagram Reels / TikTok / YouTube Shorts
I get air sick. Not dramatically, not medically, just persistently and inconveniently and in a way that makes every flight a quiet negotiation between my body and my itinerary. I have been air sick over the South China Sea, over the Bay of Bengal, over approximately forty minutes of European airspace that I could not identify because I was looking at the floor.
I have also photographed every single plane window I have ever sat next to. The clouds. The wing. The inexplicable beauty of being thirty thousand feet above something I cannot name. I have posted all of it. The captions were things like “Okinawa here I come” and “10,000 feet and rising” and once, memorably, just the destination flag emoji and nothing else. Posted with complete confidence. Zero context. Maximum engagement.
None of those photographs reflect what was happening when I took them. What was happening was that I was air sick and bored and slightly too cold and the person next to me had taken their shoes off and the window content was the only thing giving the experience any narrative shape at all.
This is the series. Not the window shot. The moment before the window shot and the moment after it and the honest account of everything in between that never makes it to the caption. A frequent traveller who is extremely good at producing travel content and extremely candid about what producing it actually involves. She is not complaining. She loves to travel. She is just done pretending the highlight reel is the whole story.
The strategic case for a premium airline doing this is simple. Aspirational content gets scrolled past. Relatable content gets shared, tagged, saved, and commented on with “this is literally me every single flight.” The series makes the brand feel human in a way that no cabin shot ever could, drives organic engagement that paid content cannot buy, and reframes the premium experience without saying the word premium once. By the end of every episode the audience understands that despite everything, Maia keeps coming back to this airline. That is the most powerful endorsement in the business and it arrives entirely on its own.
The series runs on one format across every episode: the post versus the reality. Split screen, parallel narrative, whatever the episode needs. The beautiful content on one side. The actual experience on the other.
Episode 1: “The Window Shot”
MAIA, 31, is in a window seat. She is pale. She has been pale since approximately twenty minutes after takeoff.
She picks up her phone. Looks at the window. Clouds. Light. Actually quite beautiful.
She takes the photo. Twelve attempts. Gets the one without the wing reflection.
She posts it. Caption: “10,000 feet and rising.”
She puts her phone down. Looks straight ahead. Says nothing.
VOICEOVER: Great content. Terrible time.
End card. Brand name.
Episode 2: “The Arrival Shot”
MAIA emerges from arrivals. She has been travelling for eleven hours. She looks exactly like someone who has been travelling for eleven hours.
She stops. Looks around. Finds the light.
Takes the photo. Fixes her hair in the front camera first. Finds a better angle. Takes it again.
Posts it. Caption: “she arrived.”
Picks up her bag. Walks directly to the nearest chair and sits down for four minutes without moving.
VOICEOVER: Great content. Terrible time.
End card. Brand name.
Episode 3: “The Food Shot”
MAIA is at a hawker centre in Singapore. She has ordered something she cannot identify. She is committed.
She photographs it from six angles. Finds the one where it looks intentional.
Posts it. Caption: “eating like a local.”
Takes a bite. Pauses.
Takes another bite. Decision made. Finishes it. Orders another one.
VOICEOVER: Great content. Surprisingly good time, actually.
End card. Brand name.
Social captions for the series:
“She photographed the window. She was air sick. The content was immaculate.”
“The highlight reel is real. So is everything that didn’t make it.”
“Eleven hours. One good photo. Worth it.”
“Travel content tip: find the light. Ignore everything else. Post confidently.”
“The caption said ‘living for this.’ She was mostly just living through it.”
End card. Brand name. Great content. Terrible time. Black Mirror’s Nosedive was a cautionary tale, we turned it into a travel series.