How Delta Harnessed the Sphere to Reveal the Future of Air Travel

Delta didn’t lose its coveted keynote slot at the Consumer Electronics Show this year with a simple speech on a static stage.

The airline had big ambitions to mark its hundredth anniversary, and used a full sensory experience in the Las Vegas Sphere to show how the future of travel is shaping up.

“I sat down with the Consumer Technology Association early last year and said, ‘Let’s talk about Delta’s potential as part of the CES lineup, just with one caveat: I really want the keynote in the Sphere,” Delta CMO Alicia Tillman. told ADWEEK.

The Sfera team was not associated with CES and after ten months of collaboration, Delta became the first corporate keynote to take place in the new location, taking over its exterior on Tuesday evening with images related to air travel, and host a virtual reality experience in their place. lobby that allows people to simulate what it’s like to fly a Delta plane.

But it was the hour-long keynote that really tapped into the full immersive capabilities of the Sphere.

CEO Ed Bastian stepped onto the massive stage in front of an audience of thousands, surrounded by planes that swooped 360 degrees, swooped through cityscapes, and landed on the tarmac. The wind blew through the audience, and their seats broke beneath them, simulating the sensation of flight.

The experience was produced by the team that put on the GRAMMYs, and Delta’s in-house creative team worked with their agency, Wieden + Kennedy, to bring those visuals to life, and then with the Sphere team for “Sphere -itize” those images. Inside the place, Tillman said.

“We walked into that space with our eyes wide open knowing that this is not a dance stage, and this is not about PowerPoint presentations,” he said. “There is no place on earth like the Sphere.”

During the hour-long keynote, Bastian was joined on stage by celebrities such as Viola Davis — who voiced Delta’s 2023 brand campaign, “Kaleidoscope” — and NFL quarterback legend Tom Brady. Bastian also hosted high-profile executives such as Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and YouTube Chief Business Officer Mary Ellen Coe, as well as longtime Delta employees and flight attendants. The event ended with a performance by Lenny Kravitz.

But the keynote wasn’t all show; Delta announced some key innovations and partnerships on stage that provided a bird’s eye view of the future of air travel.