benchmark report
airline marketing
the 20th birthday plane
social
bring me sunshine
EASYJET
JET2 January can be a very depressing month in the Nor thern hemisphere. Christmas is over, the days are shor t, the weather is bad, and everyone is back to work. In the UK, news media chooses a Monday in January each year to be #BlueMonday, the day when Brits’ spirits are supposedly at their lowest. While #BlueMonday is very much an ar tificial event, many travel brands have capitalized on it – suggesting that the best way to beat post-holiday depression is to plan a holiday in the sun. Finding a slightly different way to piggyback on the publicity of #BlueMonday, low fare UK airline Jet2 launched its ‘Bring Me Sunshine’ package holiday promotion on social media at the star t of the month. Jet2’s Facebook fans were asked for ways in which they would like to cheer themselves up. FEB 2016 ISSUE
Responses included favorite films , ways to get cozy and feel-good songs to listen to. By answering these questions, Jet2’s Facebook fans actually determined what went into twenty ‘Bring me Sunshine’ packs that were then sent out to competition winners later that month.
As part of a £10 million multi-platform marketing campaign across Europe, easyJet recently gave us its 20th anniversary plane . Much more than a simple ‘faces on a plane’ type tactic, easyJet has found ways to keep this campaign running for almost six months.
“For two-thirds of people, having a beach holiday to look forward to will help them feel motivated,” commented Steve Heapy, CEO of Jet2.com and Jet2holidays. “This is reflected in the fact that January is our busiest time of the year ( for holiday bookings.”)
In September and October, social media fans were invited to send in photos of their European holidays from the past twenty years by uploading them to the 20th anniversary micro-site, or by posting them with the hashtag #timeflies on twitter or Instagram. The winning snapshots were incorporated into a kaleidoscope of images for the special plane livery: a plane to be indelibly etched with two decades of memories .
Jet2 also celebrated #BlueMonday on Facebook with its January Feelings Forecast , a sor t of mock weather map highlighting the different low moods around the UK, and proclaiming Newcastle to be the sunniest feeling British city.
Over 108,000 people shared their photos, with 5000 people submitting pictures on the first day of the campaign alone. EasyJet is now promoting the finished 20th birthday
plane, asking people on social media to ‘spot the plane’ by uploading a photo of it a for a chance to win a return pair of flights. The aircraft is flying all around the carrier’s European network and was recently tagged in Salzburg, London Gatwick, Lanzarote and Hamburg. The birthday campaign (for which the official tagline is ‘how 20 years has flown’) continued with the re-running of the first ever easyJet TV ad from 1995, which advertised flights as “costing the same as a pair of jeans”. The nostalgic ad was viewed more than 50,000 times on Facebook . Another 20th birthday TV ad debuted during 2015 Rugby World Cup. It used a Ferris wheel to demonstrate the passing of time while telling the story of a couple who meet and fell in love on an easyJet flight.
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EXPERIENTIAL SOCIAL DIGITAL TV, PRINT, OOH
