ACCELERATOR CARDS
Embraer Commercial Aviation - Global Campaign.
Creative Direction · Art Direction · Campaign Development ·
Content & Visual System
Art Direction — André Machado + Leandro Dourado
Visual System & Card Design — André Machado + Leandro Dourado + Gravity
Content Development — Ana Schmidt + André Machado + Leandro Dourado
Campaign Concept — Gravity Global
Campaign Development — ECA Content Team + Gravity Global
Campaign Activation — Gravity Global
OPPORTUNITY
Aviation enthusiasts are a highly engaged audience. They track aircraft, photograph specific liveries, follow deliveries and new aircraft launches, and often develop strong personal connections with the products they follow.
Some take that passion even further: from memorizing aircraft technologies to collecting aviation antiques and even turning aircraft liveries into tattoos.
We saw an opportunity to build on that behavior and create something that could take Embraer's brand beyond traditional aviation communication.
The challenge was simple:
What if Embraer take this opportunity to create something people wanted to collect to talk about our brand organically?
IDEA
The idea was to translate the kind of collecting culture found in geek communities into the aviation world, by using the same approaches that companies do with that target. The inspiration came by the trading cards.
The initial concept came from our international agency in London: Accelerator Cards, a collectible card universe built around Embraer's products, technology, customers and global presence. The project was developed collaboratively across the internal creative team, content team and international agency.
My contribution included:
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Refining the collecting and trading mechanics
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Defining card categories and content structure
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Developing the rarity system, its visual differences
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Shaping the visual language and layouts
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Developing card content/facts together with the content team
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Supporting the campaign activation strategy
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Ensuring consistency between the physical cards and the wider campaign
We not only produced promotional cards, but also developed a system designed to encourage collecting, discovery and trading.
THE SYSTEM
The collection we built as a structured system of categories, each revealing a different aspect of Embraer's products, brand, customers and global presence. Each card included a Fact File with information about that specific category. The categories were:
PRODUCT
The product related cards explored different aspects of Embraer's aircraft and technology: Profit Hunter (E190-E2 and E195-E2, our latest/focused product), Cabin Interior, Livery, Sustainability.
ECA BRAND
Focused on Embraer's Commercial Aviation brand values and the principles.
These cards gave the collection a way to communicate the thinking and meaning behind the brand, rather than focusing only on products.
GLOBAL PRESENCE
These cards highlighted Embraer's presence around the world, connecting specific locations with facts, stories and aspects of the company's relationship with each market.
INSTITUTIONAL
Institutional cards expanded the conversation beyond Commercial Aviation, introducing facts, stories and milestones from Embraer as a global company.
This was particularly important for audiences who might know Embraer primarily through its aircraft, but not necessarily the wider organization behind them, all the business units and products.
CUSTOMERS
Customer cards celebrated airlines operating Embraer aircraft, with a particular focus on E2 customers.
The visual treatment could also adapt to the identity of each airline, connecting the customer's livery and story to the wider collection.
VISUAL DIRECTION
THE CAMPAIGN
The cards were designed to live beyond a giveaway, we had to explain and engage the audience.
The activation was used at major aviation events, including Farnborough International Airshow and Singapore Airshow - where this community is mostly found - visitors could discover the collection at Embraer's aircraft display. By scanning a QR code and following the Embraer page, they could unlock access to a sealed card pack.
Each pack contained multiple cards, including information introducing the collection and randomly selected cards, so participants could not simply choose which cards they wanted. Completing the collection therefore required repeated participation and encouraged enthusiasts to trade with one another to find the cards they were missing.
The campaign also communicated on social media (with videos, posts and banners) the different cards available, encouraging people to seek out missing cards at the next events and trade with other enthusiasts.
OUTCOME
The project demonstrated a different approach to brand engagement: instead of creating another piece of advertising, we created something the audience could actively seek, collect and exchange. The campaign deliberately moved away from conventional aviation marketing:
Product information became card content, facts.
Aircraft liveries became collectibles.
Technology became a category.
Embraer branding organically.
The campaign has measurements limitations in the original data-capture setup made from the agency, which difficult to accurately present its conversion impact.
Despite this, the project remains a strong example of using audience behavior and cultural references to develop a less conventional form of brand engagement and one of our proudest campaigns.