UGA PR Senior Works on Delta Commercial Campaigns During Internship

Mallory Brannon

Mallory Brannon, a senior from Atlanta majoring in public relations, recently completed an advertising internship with Delta Air Lines, Inc. this summer. Below, Brannon shares a behind-the-scenes look at some of the projects she worked on, including two new commercials, "Up" and "NY Anthem." 

"When Delta brought me on board to assist in planning their commercials, I honestly had no idea what I was in store for. So where do you begin when you need to plan a commercial?" Brannon said. "First things first, you have to figure out where you're going to film. We filmed two commercials, one national and one for New York. Given that the first commercial is aired in only in those specific New York markets, we selected LaGuardia airport for our first spot. Unlike our national spot, this one didn't take place entirely inside the airport because of the nature of the story line."

 "For the second national spot we selected the Atlanta airport since that's where Delta is headquartered and also because the construction of the new international terminal was just completed," Brannon said. "Using the freshly renovated terminal at LGA and the new space in ATL gave us a new, great-looking canvas to film. After a location was selected, our ad agency (Weiden + Kennedy) sent out a call for directors. After the agency selects a director, they then began to collaborate as a team to develop story boards and begin pitching ideas to Delta."

Brannon shared some of her responsibilities during the commercial process. "Through their collaboration and Deltas input, storyboards are developed. This process continues until literally the last week before filming," she said. "My job was to coordinate with Delta contacts, location managers and security at both respective airports making sure expectations were set and that all appropriate authorities were aware and fully informed of what our team wanted to accomplish." 

The filming process was not always easy in such a busy atmosphere, Brannon said. "The customer and their flying experience always comes first and that just can't be interfered with. It's very much a give and take from all sides and that's just something that you have to understand when you're attempting to film in the busiest airport in the world." 


Many thanks to Mallory for sharing an inside look to her internship. Below are the final cuts of the two commercials, "Up" and "NY Anthem":