‘Size the opportunity, then seize it’: Flight Centre global CMO prepares for category expansion, revenue take-off via owned media-publisher pivot

Four years ago, Flight Centre’s global CMO Megan Henderson was tasked with leading a sweeping restructure of Flight Centre’s worldwide marketing operation – centralising five teams into one while overhauling its martech stack and contracts and simultaneously finding efficiencies and growth. Daunting. But Henderson knew that Fight Centre’s 60 million annual unique online visitors, broad customer comms channels yielding rich first party data plus circa 400 physical stores could help drive the business into fresh territory – adjacent travel market services beyond flights – while generating revenue via owned media packaged and sold to new and existing brand partners. Enter owned media valuations specialist, Sonder, which dived deep to benchmark and calculate the value of each and all of Flight Centres channels and assets – and highlight where it could go next as an owned media network. Now Henderson aims to make Flight Centre a global case study in how customers, data, physical and digital footprint combine to drive growth, revenue, profit and cross-funnel, cross-category expansion – while landing new paying partners. It’s now rolling out screens across all stores to boost brand building capability and link it through to first party data-powered conversion. “Having Sonder shine a light on what we could be doing with our digital screens has really fast-tracked the process for us to make sure that our stores have a minimum of two digital screens that I can use for brand advertising with all kinds of partners,” says Henderson. She’s now ensuring partners think of Flight Centre “as a mass market retailer with millions of customers online and in store… and see that as an opportunity that they can't get with a standard media buying mix.” Sonder co-founder, Jonathan Hopkins, says that’s the key takeout for businesses currently leaving money on the table by overlooking their owned media channels and assets: “There is vast opportunity out there. If you have a website, store network, an email program with a sizeable customer base, then you're more than halfway there to building an owned media proposition to leverage through your own marketing and with brand partners,” says Hopkins. “It’s all about seizing the opportunity.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.