Aviasales brand communication

Aviasales’ target audience consists of men and women aged 25 to 45 who actively use digital services and travel regularly. The majority of the audience lives in large cities and has an average or above-average income level. These are people who value mobility, independence, and the convenience of online services. They often travel for both tourism and work purposes, plan their vacations independently, and strive to optimize travel expenses.

One of Aviasales' key communication strengths is its extensive presence across multiple digital platforms. Aviasales takes a different approach to social media than many of its competitors. Rather than distributing the same content across every platform, the company adapts its tone of voice and content format to the specific audience of each channel. This approach allows the brand to engage users more effectively and build stronger relationships with them. As a result, Aviasales feels authentic, relevant, and memorable, even within the highly competitive travel industry.

The company maintains an active presence on several platforms, including VKontakte, Telegram, Instagram*, X (Twitter), Threads*, TikTok, and YouTube. This multi-channel strategy helps Aviasales connect with different audience segments and remain visible throughout various stages of the customer journey.

*Owned by Meta, recognized as an extremist organization, banned in the territory of the Russian Federation.

Telegram serves as an important channel for informal communication. The channel alternates between humorous content, memes, and ironic observations about travel with practical information such as flight deals, destination recommendations, travel guides, and travel hacks. This balance allows the brand to maintain audience engagement while simultaneously positioning itself as a useful and trustworthy source of travel information.

X (Twitter) and Threads*: Used for public interactions, responding to negative feedback with irony, and engaging with competitors and users. They function as a public showcase of the brand’s «cheeky» personality.

On platforms such as TikTok, Instagram Reels*, YouTube Shorts*, and VK Clips, the company focuses on entertainment content. These channels are also used for short videos, memes, humorous sketches, and trend-based content that reflects the brand’s distinctive ironic tone of voice. Aviasales actively uses web series and recurring short-form content as part of its PR strategy. These episodic formats create long-term audience engagement, encourage repeat viewing, and help build a consistent brand personality. In its communication with audiences, Aviasales relies on humor, travel-related storytelling, and collaborations with local brands.

As a result, the company’s social media channels function as an ongoing promotional platform. They help increase brand awareness, strengthen customer loyalty, and maintain a strong presence in the digital space. This style of communication makes the brand feel more approachable and enables it to build an emotional connection with its audience in a natural way.

*Owned by Meta, recognized as an extremist organization, banned in the territory of the Russian Federation.

One of the most successful formats consists of mini-series comedy sketches based on everyday travel situations. These videos portray common problems faced by travelers, such as searching for cheap tickets, overpaying for flights, packing luggage, airport stress, delayed departures, or unrealistic vacation expectations. The content is intentionally exaggerated and highly relatable, encouraging viewers to share videos and discuss their own experiences. Although the service itself may only appear briefly, each episode reinforces Aviasales' association with affordable and stress-free travel, while the serialized format helps keep subscribers engaged and encourages them to return to the brand repeatedly.

Another recurring format is situational marketing content based on trending internet discussions, memes, and current events. Instead of producing traditional advertisements, Aviasales quickly adapts viral trends and integrates them into travel-related narratives. This strategy allows the brand to become part of broader online conversations while maintaining visibility among younger digital audiences. As a result, Aviasales is perceived not only as a travel platform but also as an active participant in internet culture.

Collaborations with other major brands play a particularly important role in the company’s PR strategy. In many short-form videos, the product itself is not the main focus. Instead, Aviasales presents its service as a solution to a travel-related problem, which becomes the central element of the story. This makes advertising less intrusive and allows promotional messages to blend naturally into both entertainment content and users’ everyday lives. Viewers engage with the narrative first and only then notice the brand, making the message more subtle yet more memorable.

Communication theory explains how messages are created and interpreted, as well as how they are transmitted and reacted to in various contexts. Griffin understood communication as a relative process of creating and interpreting messages that evoke a response [4]. Communication theories give an idea of the processes that occur between its interacting participants. They work as a lens that highlights the aspects of communication necessary for analysis.

​In the case of Aviasales communication, two theoretical approaches can be distinguished: the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), which focuses on message processing and influencing audience reaction, and Dialogic Theory, which examines how public relations professionals should ethically build relationships with the public by engaging in dialogue with it. Together, they provide a broad perspective on communication, combining persuasion and a two-way exchange of views.

Elaboration Likelihood Model

The Elaboration Likelihood Model or ELM provides a theoretical framework for understanding the mechanisms of communication influence on people. It helps us understand why some messages convince us through facts while others through emotions.

The central route works when a person is really immersed in a topic, he is interested in it and is ready to thoroughly understand the information provided to him. People who follow this path really strive to compare facts, pay attention to details, and only then form their opinions and attitudes. However, the peripheral route is different. It applies superficial perception of a topic, in which a customer does not have enough motivation or time to think and analyze information, but reacts to certain external cues, such as humor, emotions, visual appeal, brand popularity, or trust in the source.

The theory is relevant for Aviasales because the brand actively combines both routes of persuasion in its communication. Through memes, humor, and emotionally engaging content, Aviasales attracts attention using peripheral cues. At the same time, the company provides practical information, price comparisons, and travel recommendations that encourage more rational processing through the central route. Therefore, ELM helps explain how Aviasales successfully builds engagement, brand recognition, and consumer trust across different communication channels.

Dialogic theory

Dialogic Theory views communication as a continuous process. Its core idea is that organizations must be prepared to engage with the public in honest and ethical ways to create effective organizational channels of public communication. It emphasizes that communication is not one-way. This theory is useful because it helps understand whether communication creates space for dialogue, rather than simply conveying information.

Mutuality, Propinquity, Empathy, Risk, and Commitment are 5 key aspects that Dialogic Theory disables, as well as the concept of the Dialogic Loop. ​All communication between Aviasales and its audience takes place in the digital space, where direct interaction is especially important, which is why Dialogic Theory is relevant for this brand. Analyzing through its lens will help to understand whether a company reacts to user feedback and how it maintains relationships with its consumers.

Analysis of Aviasales' social media has shown that the brand uses a sustainable communication strategy in which entertainment content prevails over direct marketing. Despite the fact that the posts I have cited from Instagram*, Threads*, and Telegram do not directly encourage the purchase of airline tickets and there is no information about the services provided, such publications help to increase and maintain brand awareness in the media space and encourage users to regularly interact with the company’s social networks.

*Owned by Meta, recognized as an extremist organization, banned in the territory of the Russian Federation.

These examples demonstrate the central route of persuasion, as they provide concrete information about Aviasales' features, discounts, and travel opportunities. The audience is encouraged to evaluate the practical benefits of the service and make decisions based on relevant information rather than emotional appeal.

As mentioned earlier, Dialogic theory considers communication as a process of building and maintaining relationships through dialogue, only in this case it becomes effective. The way dialogic theory is used in Aviasales brand communication can be considered using the example of the three most pronounced characteristics, such as mutuality, propinquity and risk, combined with the presence of a Dialogic loop.

Dialogic Loop in Online Communication

​In its communication, Aviasales provides several mechanisms that support the Dialogic Loop, allowing the audience to ask questions and the organization to answer them. For example, in the brand’s telegram channel, any user can leave a comment in the corresponding open chat, ask a question and get an answer from a trained employee. Similarly, the platform has a support button with answers to frequently asked questions and a built-in smart assistant. It is also possible to subscribe to updates and receive notifications with up-to-date information about hot tickets. For such purposes, there are even telegram bots specially developed by the company, thanks to which the user does not need to constantly update the site. These communication channels ensure a continuous exchange between the organization and its public.

Recommendations

​To further enhance the effectiveness of the brand’s strategy, Aviasales can increase the amount of educational content dedicated to travel planning and life hacks for them, as well as budget management tips. Informative articles with similar content can be found in their online magazine, but introducing it in larger numbers on other resources could benefit from strengthening the brand’s credibility and stimulating deeper information processing through Central Routes of persuasion. The company can also conduct more interactive campaigns, the essence of which will be content and travel stories on behalf of the users themselves, which will strengthen the emotional attachment of the audience and strengthen the principle of reciprocity. It is necessary to maintain a balance between humor and sensitivity, and to continue to follow an ironic style of communication, but to do so with increased caution in the era of the new Internet, when the public is becoming more receptive, which can lead to reputational risks.

Generative model

The cover and images of the target audience were generated in NanoBanana.