British Airways "Don't Fly" Olympic/Paralympic Campaign."Tongue in cheek" or "foot in mouth" ?!

BA and its advertising agency BBH seemed to have created a fantastic "sales avoidance" Olympics ad campaign, which coming from a set of creative marketers seems a bit foolish! The TV and poster campaign had an objective of stopping everyone from flying out of the country for the Olympics to support the British Olympic teams and have now launched a similar ParalympicsGB ad.

It uses the slogan: "Don't fly support Team GB". BA professed to the campaign being "very tongue in cheek", but it seems more "foot in mouth".

The interactive element is on facebook & YouTube where you can input your postcode and see a neighbour's house using Google Streetview, tag yourself in photos at the Olympic park etc. However BA's facebook site has less than 500k likes and the YouTube ad just shy of 1 million views.

However brand activation within the Olympic site with "Park Live presented by BA" is a great idea since it became the Henman Hill of the Olympic site and gave the brand visibility. BA also teamed up with Metro to offer competition winners tickets to watch the Olympics on the big screens at Park Live.

British Airways spent £40 million in 2008 to become a tier one sponsor and be the official airline of London 2012, and their Olympic campaign launched more than a year ago. It began in May 2011 with a predominantly print-based campaign entitled “They Will Fly” featuring British athletes sponsored by BA. Initially BA stated they would not use TV but then created a clever CGI TV ad of a BA Boeing 777 taxiing passengers through the streets of London to ‘London Calling’ by The Clash. The plane comes to a halt at Stratford’s Olympic Stadium with the tagline: “Don’t fly. Support Team GB.”
According to Abigail Comber BA's head of brands the Team GB and ParalympicsGB sponsorship is its largest ever sponsorship campaign: "This campaign is stand out in terms of its longevity, most campaigns are a lot more tactical, selling products over just a two- or three-month period. This is our largest-ever sustained campaign stretching over 12 months."

In summary the ideas are good but the sponsorship execution is weak. BA seem to be spending £60+ million telling customers not to fly. I am also unclear as to what the sponsorship is adding to the BA brand or even to the Olympics itself.

• What are they selling? The brand or flights, or are they just supporting Team GB / ParalympicsGB? 
• It seems like a generic message with low brand attribution to the Olympics and poor advertising branding for BA.
• Facebook activation is low - less than 500k likes for a 12 month campaign, but at least YouTube is at 1m views.

All in all a poor level of activation, a lack of synergy between a brand and a sponsorship property, and poor creative execution. Shame