Kulula has been hard at work lately, not content with making the world laugh with their fun new aircraft paint schemes, they have now launched a hilarious travel blog called “Trev does travel” complete with a dedicated travel blogger named Trevor Townsend. Trev as he likes to be known, describes himself as a “Professional handmodel. Scrabble champion. And as of 2010, Kulula’s new official travel blogger”. I want his job ! so far he has been to Mauritius (he describes it as “It is as beautiful as Angelina Jolie wearing a dress made of the babies she has had with Brad Pitt”), and has also had the honour of staying at Cape Towns Bantry Bay Luxury Suites hotel. Trev doesn’t just travel to great places though, he also hands out a multitude of fun travel tips and resources. The campaign has only just started but so far so funny, check trev out on facebook, twitter and the “Trev does travel” blog. This Kulula awesomeness is a brain child of the King James agency.

Last week a post I did on Kulula’s new aircraft livery caused a traffic jam on my site after being linked to by BoingBoing (one of the world most popular blogs). Luckily I happen to know Kulula’s fantastic advertising & PR agency (King James & Atmosphere of Cape Town), I quickly contacted them and they kindly made up a fun banner to place next to the post in the sidebar of this site. So far the post has been viewed well over 150,000 times on my site alone and counting, and although all my analytics tools failed when the main traffic hit I can see that Kulula had thousands of click throughs to their site, not bad free global exposure.

Today I received the official press release and it looks like more fun paint jobs are being done for their new Boeing 737-800’s, read below to find out more and click on the pictures to enlarge;

“kulula’s latest plane design has been a worldwide hit after being seen by plane-spotters en-route to South Africa. Photos of the new livery dubbed “Flying 101” have since been viewed by millions having appeared on some of the world’s leading blogs, spurring a frenzy of online comments. All this before it even touched down in South Africa.

The design covers the planes exterior in a tongue-in-cheek guide to the various parts of the planes interior, such as the “Mile-high initiation chamber”. The plane is just one of a fleet expansion of eight state-of-the-art Boeing 737-800s (each with a unique livery). As these planes will be replacing the 737-400’s currently used in kulula’s fleet, South Africans can look forward to spotting the new 800’s during this year.

“The “Flying 101” was conceptualised and designed by kulula’s in-house design department. This branding idea is a result of our 2010 strategy to demystify air travel for our fans,” comments Nadine Damen, kulula Marketing Manager.

“Initially spotted by plane-spotters across the globe, our “Flying 101” plane has become famous on the world wide web before touching South African soil,” continues Damen. “We’ve been amazed by the number of blogs that have posted “Flying 101” images as well as the large number of people talking about the new branding on Twitter.”

The first Boeing, branded with the “Flying 101,” landed in Johannesburg on Monday, 8th February 2010 and will start operating from 13th February 2010.  The second Boeing is currently undergoing its transformation and will appear to kulula fans much like an oversized container box, with the words “this way up” printed on its side, is scheduled to start operating on the 8th February 2010.”

Click for update post: Kulula Official Release
Kulula (South Africa’s favourite low fare airline), have recently released this fantastic new aircraft livery entitled “Flying 101”. Kulula are well known for their fun marketing exploits and this one lives up to their high standards. Each part of the aircraft is labelled with humorous captions such as “Loo (or mile-high initiation chamber)” and “Landing gear (comes standard with super-fly mags)”. Click on the images to enlarge them.

Brilliant, the design work was done in-house by Kulula.

Via: OneLargePrawn

Recently a pretty famous golfer that some of you may know as Tiger “Love monster” Woods has been reported to be hiding out at the luxurious addiction treatment rehab clinic in Cape Town called Montrose Place. As a bit of tongue in cheek fun, Cape Town based agency King James placed the above print ad in the sports section of  the weekend edition of popular local newspaper, The Cape Argus. Love it. Hat tip: Paige Nick

Nice innovative work from Atmosphere PR agency for  local airline Kulula. They have started to offer a monthly 30 minute podcast to give their customers something enjoyable to listen to on domestic flights. At present its in a trial period but if it works they plan to do some exiting things like possibly streaming it via Bluetooth at Kulula pod banner points (A banner with a localised Bluetooth data transmitter installed to stream the content).

The first podcast features SA blogging legend Seth Rotherham from 2OceansVibe.com, Brad Armitage of exclusive beer emporium & Union, Thierry Cassuto from satirical SA news show Z News, and a fab interview and acoustic set from The Kings of Vegas.

To download it go to Kulula.com and right click on the download link, or have a little listen below.
Kulula.com Podcast V1.0

After sorting through the well over 1.7 million entries, we have decided to dedicate the uber crazy rad awesome prizes to Amy Mabin and  Sally Mills (who according to the internets is an actress from the the 60’s ! ). The very porn star pose from Amy with a chocolate Steri and the enthusiastic Vuvuzela playing from Sally just managed to put them above the rest. Both Amy and Sally work at Ogilvy Cape Town in the PR division, good work ladies. I have a feeling some limited T-shirts and other rad Steri Stumpie prizes will soon be whipping their way to you. Congrats and sorry for the rest of the people that missed out, maybe next time ! Have a great weekend, I’m now off to a poolside hotel rooftop party with Goldfish playing and lots Cape Town angels, thanks to Sir Seth Rotherham and 2OceansVibe. Nice. Welcome to summer Cape Town.

After all the recent celebrating of South African heritage/braai day, and the Loeries etc its hard to be back at work as normal, so the wonderful Tessa from Steri Stumpie has kindly given me a whole bunch of what I’m promised are uber-rad limited edition steri goodies – including a supply of the two new flavours.

To win these we’re running a bosses desk invasion challenge – you send us pictures of you posing on your bosses desk or similar with a Steri Stumpie and we pick the most deserving one to win. Bonus points if your boss is someone really important (like Jacob Zuma or something). I’ll need the photos by mid day this Friday (2nd of October) and then will announce the winner that same afternoon.

All you need to do is email your pics to me at steri@chrisrawlinson.com. One last thing, this is for people in South Africa only please.

Love this brand new Spot from King James and Velocity Films for Allan Gray Investments.

From concept to completion the spot took just over fourteen months and involved a combined team of well over a hundred and sixty people, not including extras. This has to be one of my favourites of the year and I think this below comment is well deserved:

“In all my years of advertising, I have never seen a treatment that was so detailed, so carefully thought through, and so deeply researched, than the treatment Keith gave us when pitching to handle this commercial. From beginning to end, his commitment to the job bordered on obsession.” says Alistair King, Executive Creative Director at King James.

Agency: King James

Production: Velocity Films

Director: Keith Rose

Creative: Karin Barry-McCormack and Paige Nick (Check out her great Blog!) & Legend Alistair King

**** Bonus: See some behind the scenes action: click here ****