The Global Airline Taking Off Thanks to Savvy Creator Marketing 🛫 🇮🇳 (HBBIP #131)

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What were you doing on March 8, 2025?

I know, I know: that was over a year ago, and why am I asking, anyway? What am I, a cop?

Never mind me, dear reader. I’m not trying to pry into your personal life. I’m just doing that annoying thing that people do sometimes: asking a highly specific question not because I really want to hear your answer, but just because I want to supply my own.

If you do want to tell me what you were doing on March 8, please feel free to reply to this email. But for now, here’s more about ME.

You see, on March 8, 2025, I was on the other side of the world. I thought I was enjoying some travels after a far-flung wedding, but it turns out that, unbeknownst to me at the time, I was actually doing something far more important: conducting market research for this newsletter.

It’s always more fun to write HBBIP about brands that I have direct experience with. And in this case, I have direct experience with…

The Top Brand of All Time (of the Week): Air India

Granted, I was flying Air India Express. Still counts.

On March 8, 2025, I enjoyed a smooth and peaceful flight from Bengaluru to Goa’s Dabolim Airport. While I was only in the air for about an hour and twenty minutes, the experience has stuck with me for all this time, compelling me to share my experience aboard one of India’s—nay, the world’s!—premier airlines.

We’ve covered airlines in HBBIP before, ranging from Delta/American/United to EasyJet. Now let’s take the globe for a spin and test out a sunnier locale.

Plus, while Air India might not be the AI that everybody is talking about, if I call it ‘AI’ enough it might help with GEO. We shall see.

What Is Air India?

Founded in 1932 by the magnificently named (and mustachioed) JRD Tata, Air India has a fascinating history that I won’t do justice to in this newsletter. As the brand transitioned from a state-run to private enterprise, Air India has forged a distinct identity both in the air, on the ground, and in social media.

The brand has also been the subject of unfortunate headlines as of late. I want to acknowledge that, while also emphasizing that those headlines won’t be the focus of this newsletter. At HBBIP, we focus on brands’ creator marketing programs, and in this respect, Air India demands some positive attention.

How Is Air India Performing?

Without further ado, let’s see how Air India has taken off from 2022 to 2025, and trace what that growth says about the brand’s expanding social footprint.

Air India Creator Count, 2022 - 2025

No big deal, that’s just Air India growing from 348 creators in 2022 to 7.3k creators in 2025—good for a 21x increase over that period. That is a massive expansion in the size of the brand’s creator ecosystem in just three years. It’s like being bumped from the row next to the bathrooms all the way up to first class.

Air India Post Count, 2022 - 2025

As you’d expect, all those creators didn’t just sit at home twiddling their thumbs. No, dear reader: they put those thumbs to use, typing about how much they love Air India! As a result, the brand surged from 1.3k posts in 2022 to 69.3k posts in 2025, a 54x improvement.

That’s the difference between a relatively limited volume of creator conversation and a full-scale social presence. And with that full-scale social presence came…

Air India EMV, 2022 - 2025

…A massive improvement to Air India’s Earned Media Value (EMV), a metric that captures virality and buzz across conversations on social media. The brand climbed from $5.3M EMV in 2022 to $413.3M EMV in 2025, a 78x increase.

That kind of shift into the upper atmosphere suggests that Air India wasn’t just flooding the zone with low-impact content. Instead, creators were sharing posts about the brand that resonated deeply with travel-minded audiences.

Air India Impressions, 2022 - 2025

Feast your eyes on an 183x increase: 36.7M impressions in 2022, then all the way up to 6.73B impressions in 2025. In other words, Air India’s creator-driven reach went from the biggest city in India to multiple times the entire country’s population. (Longtime readers know I love a geographic comparison to illustrate an increase in impressions.)

Air India Engagements, 2022 - 2025

And all those people (aka nearly everyone on earth) weren’t just passively seeing content about Air India—they were actively engaging with it. The brand jumped from 3.3M engagements in 2022 to 171.2M in 2025, good for a 52x increase.

Where were those gains in visibility coming from? Well, compared to a lot of brands I’ve looked at recently, the answer is: pretty much everywhere!

Air India Share of Impressions by Platform, 2025

The channel split for Air India’s 2025 impressions shows that the brand’s reach is fairly diversified, though Instagram still leads the pack. Out of 6.73B total impressions, Instagram contributed 2.58B or about 38.3%, while YouTube added 2.28B, or 33.9%. TikTok accounted for 933.8M impressions (13.9%), and Facebook delivered 683.3M (10.2%).

Rather than relying on a single platform, Air India appears to be winning attention across several major channels at once. And while all these platforms are experiencing high growth, YouTube (+4034% YoY) and TikTok (+2603% YoY) take the grand prize for growth.

Air India Share of Engagements by Platform, 2025

The engagement split is a lot more definitive. Of Air India’s 171.2M total engagements in 2025, Instagram drove 97.7M, (57.1%). TikTok followed with 31.9M (18.6%), while YouTube generated 21.9M (12.8%), and Facebook contributed 17.5M (10.2%).

Thus, while Air India built reach across multiple platforms, Instagram was the clear center of gravity when it came to audience interaction. That said, as they did with impressions, YouTube and TikTok once again outpace Instagram in terms of YoY engagements growth, indicating that this advantage may not last forever.

Who Are Air India's Creators?

I’ll admit: my familiarity with the Indian creator marketing scene is limited. That said, I owe the people of India—all 1.5 billion of you—an apology: I was not familiar with your social media game.

While much of Air India’s attention on social media stems from both Indian and international media, creators were also getting in on the fun, spreading the good word across multiple platforms.

Take micro-influencer and YouTuber Rider Rajdeep, who has seemingly dedicated his time on earth to reviewing airline food. And not because he’s doing research for a standup bit, or because he did something awful in his past life—just for the love of the game.

Videos like this one, in which Rider reviewed, and I’m not joking, a tin of mixed nuts, garnered millions of views (this one is sitting at 13.9M, to be precise). As a result, Rider inspired $582.3k EMV across 21 posts, punching well above his 80.1k YouTube subscribers.

Or take news and travel commentator Vinay Sharma, who loves to share offbeat stories with his 374.3k followers on Instagram. Mr. Sharma sparked engagement by highlighting strange-but-true findings in the travel space, like an Air India flight that turned out to be cheaper than the same itinerary by car, or the discovery of an abandoned plane during airport construction.

I’ll admit, “Indian air travel oddities” was not a social media rabbit hole I ever thought I’d fall down. But now I see the appeal.

I can’t help but feel a personal connection to Air India, given my March 8, 2025 experience, and it’s clear that millions of people around the world feel that same connection. Creators continuously craft content showing the lighter side of Air India, helping the brand find its wings on social media.

*All data, unless otherwise specified, stems from CreatorIQ's public-facing brand leaderboards. We will never share performance metrics from a customer's CreatorIQ profile, or any brand's private information.

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