High five - KLM | Clapboard Ad Archive

KLM’s Live High Five campaign, orchestrated by DDB in the Netherlands for the 2014 market, set a new benchmark for ambient advertising in the travel and transport sector by converting a familiar gesture into a compelling brand signature. Bridging Amsterdam and New York through a real-time, interactive video installation, the campaign captured and celebrated the essence of KLM’s global connectivity during its World Deal Weeks—transforming the simple act of a high five into an audacious symbol of international closeness and shared adventure. Hundreds of participants queued on both sides of the Atlantic to coordinate a perfect, synchronized high five with a stranger thousands of miles away, their moment of contact instantly becoming both a digital spectacle and potential gateway: winners received two tickets between the iconic cities, grounding the exchange in the palpable excitement of real travel opportunity. This inventive use of interactive technology delivered a spectacle that drew widespread public and press attention, culminating in over half a million campaign views, reinforcing both the emotional and aspirational appeal of KLM’s proposition. Notably, the campaign eschewed product demonstration and celebrity endorsement in favor of what Clapboard’s taxonomy would classify as FORMAT#9—Symbolize the Benefit—leveraging the universally understood gesture of a high five to literalize the human connection KLM enables and to dramatize the brand’s role in shrinking distances for a global audience eager for adventure. By focusing on eye-level participation, real-world incentives, and uncomplicated interaction, the campaign emphasized accessibility and inclusivity, making international travel feel less like a logistical leap and more like a friendly invitation. At a time when many airline campaigns were sidestepping the anxieties and barriers of travel, KLM and DDB chose to foreground optimism, spontaneity, and a tangible sense of community—qualities that resonated strongly, as reflected in the campaign’s reach and the energy evident in user engagement. By integrating an ambient stunt into a wider deal-driven strategy, KLM crafted a layered communications event that was at once playful, branded, and transactionally effective, demonstrating acute market awareness and a flair for activating grassroots buzz to reinforce top-level business objectives. The campaign earns 78/100 in Clapboard’s global creative archive. For an industry long obsessed with grand visuals and aspirational storytelling, KLM’s Live High Five shows the power of a single, iconic gesture to collapse emotional and geographic distances when tied boldly and simply to the business proposition at hand.