Disclaimer
This research project contains references to entities and individuals whose legal status in the Russian Federation requires acknowledgment:
— Instagram — a product of Meta Platforms Inc., recognized as an extremist organization and banned in the Russian Federation.
— Yuri Dud — included in the registry of foreign agents in the Russian Federation.
Aviasales — analysis of the brand's communication strategy through the lens of Elaboration Likelihood Model and Gatekeeping Theory.
Rubricator
1. Introduction 2. Communication Channels 3. Theoretical Framework
- Gatekeeping;
- ELM
- Analysis
- Gatekeeping;
- ELM
- Conclusion & Recommendations
- Sources
1. Introduction
What Aviasales Is
Aviasales is a Russian flight metasearch engine that aggregates offers from 728 airlines, 200 ticket agencies, and 5 booking systems into one interface. The brand was launched in 2007 by programmer Konstantin Kalinov as a personal blog about airline sales, grew into a service in 2008, and became the most recognizable brand in its category by the 2020s. Today: around 18 million monthly users, and a branded search query that on Yandex outranks the generic "авиабилеты".
The brand's core positioning is captured in one self-description: "a smart search engine for cheap tickets that speaks like a human." Simplicity, speed, affordability, and humor — the four pillars on which everything else rests.
Tone of voice + audience
According to communications director Yanis Dzenis, the brand "jokes about everything except extreme sports and falling planes." Aviasales consciously avoids corporate language and pathos — humor is not decoration, but a core part of the product.
The target audience is not a single segment but two overlapping generations the brand speaks to in different voices:
— Zoomers (15-27) — the audience of TikTok, Instagram*, and meme culture. They come for the brand's mascots (the booby bird, the traveling duck, Aviaslav) and absurdist humor. Communication is short, visual, and ironic.
— The older generation (35+) — the audience of TV, long-form YouTube, email newsletters, and postcards from Baba Tonya. Here the brand speaks more calmly, with recognizable stylistics and without TikTok absurdism.
— Between them sits the main solvent audience aged 25-45, reached through Telegram, YouTube blogger integrations, and expert content in the PSZHR magazine.
Aviasales is one of the few Russian brands that successfully speaks to several generations at once without reducing them to a lowest common denominator.
On the left side — Aviaslav, on the right side — postcard from Grandma Aviatonya
2. Communication Channels
Channels overview
Aviasales builds a multi-channel ecosystem in which each platform is a standalone tool with its own content, format, and voice. The principle is clear: not cross-posting, but adaptation to the audience of each platform.
— TikTok — short vertical humor, brand characters (the booby bird, Aviaslav, the traveling duck — a viral 2025 trend with 40M+ views) — Twitter / X — quick reactions to current events in real time — Telegram — the brand's flagship channel (≈ 284,000 subscribers), combining short situational posts and extended pieces with the brand's own analytics — YouTube — blogger integrations (60+ partnerships including Dud, Ptushkin, Usachev, Lapenko) and long-form travel content — TV — selective campaigns, calmer humor, focus on brand recognition
Beyond external platforms, the brand develops its own media — the PSZHR travel magazine, service bots (Cheap Tickets Bot, Baba Tonya bot), and branded sticker packs on VK and Telegram. Aviasales does not just use existing platforms — it builds its own infrastructure on top of them.
This principle produces both a variety of message formats and a variety of ways the audience processes them — the central theme of our analysis in section 4.
Representative content
Influencers + PR + own data
Aviasales's brand marketing relies on collaboration with bloggers without a strict brief. The principle: "tell people about us the way you think makes sense." Two-thirds of partnerships are repeat collaborations; the brand consciously chooses bloggers close to the audience, not to the topic.
At the PR level, four lines of action:
— Situational PR (news-jacking) — instant reactions to current events that media outlets pick up as content. Industry publications have called Aviasales "the king of situational meme-marketing in Russia."
— TV as tactical amplifier — the brand spends little on TV, but in 2024 a campaign produced a rare effect: the branded query "Aviasales" overtook the generic "авиабилеты" on Yandex.
— Open data — statistics on destinations and prices, used by partners (such as Pulkovo Airport) and federal media. This turns Aviasales from an object of travel journalism into a source for it.
— Outdoor and ambient media — out-of-home advertising that becomes an art object: airport bathrooms, billboard jokes, festival performances (a rave at Pulkovo, projections at Ural Music Night).
PR in action
Two facts about Aviasales summarize the principle that will guide our analysis.
First — the brand reacts to information events faster than most traditional media. Second — federal outlets increasingly cite Aviasales's own data as their primary source on travel topics.
Aviasales simultaneously reacts to current events and creates them — a dual role we will analyze in sections 3 and 4 through the Elaboration Likelihood Model and Gatekeeping Theory.
3. Theoretical Framework
The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) explains how persuasive messages change the audience’s attitude. According to this theory, there are two routes through which communication between sender and receiver can occur.
The central route is the path of cognitive processing. It is used when a person has high motivation and the ability to analyze information. The audience carefully examines the message, weighing logic, facts, and evidence — and consciously changes opinion. Opinions formed this way are stable and determine future behavior.
The peripheral route is used when motivation is low or the opportunity to engage deeply is absent. A person looks for "shortcuts" to make a decision. Attention is not focused on the substance of arguments but on superficial factors: the source's appearance, emotions, expert authority, humor, or colorful design. Opinions formed this way change quickly — they are superficial, situational, and easily replaced.
The route of message processing depends on two key factors: motivation (how important, interesting, and relevant a topic is to a person) and ability (whether a person has the knowledge, time, and capacity to reflect on information).
Gatekeeping is the process of selecting and filtering information before it is made available to a specific audience. In mass communication, gatekeepers such as editors, journalists, publishers, and media organizations determine which information is published, broadcast, or withheld — based on professional standards, organizational policies, audience interests, and personal judgment.
The concept rests on the idea that not all available information can be communicated to the public. Gatekeepers evaluate and prioritize content, deciding what counts as relevant, newsworthy, accurate, or valuable for their audience. This influences not only what information people receive but also how issues are framed and understood.
Gatekeeping serves several important functions: managing the flow of information, maintaining content quality, and helping audiences navigate large volumes of data. Because gatekeeping decisions are influenced by institutional values and individual perspectives, the process also shapes public opinion and affects which viewpoints receive attention. In the digital age, algorithms and social media platforms increasingly complement traditional human gatekeepers.
4. Analysis
Aviasales offers a particularly rich case for analysis through the Elaboration Likelihood Model because the brand operates on both routes of persuasion simultaneously. Through humor and visual identity, it engages users emotionally on the peripheral route. When the same user moves to actively search for a flight, the brand switches to the central route, providing rational tools and expert content. We trace each route in turn.
At the level of the peripheral route, Aviasales generates high brand recognition and emotional sympathy through its strong communication identity. The brand has gone beyond the traditional travel service and turned into a media outlet with its own tone of voice. Its communication is built on irony, internet memes, conversational intonation, self-irony, and situational humor. This style makes the brand "yours" for a young audience and reduces the distance between company and user.
The clearest examples are the brand's witty replies in user comments — short emotional punches (humor, sarcasm, situational wit) that build affinity with the brand voice. The user does not receive product information; they receive entertainment. Each reply collects hundreds of likes, transforming a service interaction into shareable content. The consumer does not rationally analyze the benefits of the service, evaluate search algorithms, or check the quality of the booking system — they react primarily to an emotional stimulus. By ELM logic, this is a typical example of peripheral persuasion, in which the brand relationship is formed through external signals rather than message content.
Tone of voice plays a particularly important role in the Aviasales strategy. The brand consistently rejects corporate language and speaks to the audience as a participant in internet culture. This creates trust: the user perceives the brand as more understandable, human, and close in values. Even when such communication is not directly related to product quality, it creates a positive attitude and increases the probability of choosing the service in the future.
In addition, Aviasales actively uses viral mechanics: provocative posts, situational marketing, short humorous videos, and memes. The purpose of such communications is not to explain product benefits in detail, but to create a quick emotional response and high brand retention.
The brand even openly acknowledges its own promotional nature inside the joke — directly stating "this is an Aviasales ad" — and this self-irony itself becomes a peripheral cue. The audience accepts the message precisely because it does not pretend to be anything other than what it is.
Through these mechanics, the peripheral route helps Aviasales keep the audience engaged in conditions of information overload and high competition in the digital environment.
The brand's openly self-aware ads — "Did you know Aviasales is not a meme account?" and "Oh come on, another Aviasales ad!" — work as meta-humor: the audience reacts not to the message content but to the act of breaking the fourth wall. The scale of the TikTok account (3.6M followers, 138.5M likes) shows how effective this peripheral logic is at retaining attention.
But brand resilience is not only about emotional communication. When the user switches to an actual ticket search, engagement increases sharply. Buying an airline ticket is a high-involvement decision: it involves financial cost, risk, and the need to choose the optimal option. At this point the audience begins to analyze arguments, compare prices, evaluate interface usability, and check the validity of information. This is where Aviasales switches to the central path of persuasion.
The product interface itself functions as central-route communication. The main search ("Тут покупают дешёвые авиабилеты") delivers a literal, unambiguous promise. The app's onboarding screens articulate concrete rational benefits — finding cheap tickets, tracking price drops, finding hotels without markups — making the value proposition fully transparent.
