WestJet
WestJet Christmas Miracle: 12 Flights of Christmas

The Goal

WestJet wanted to spread holiday cheer in a way that only WestJetters can – by surprising guests of 12 different WestJet flights, over 12 days, in different cities across Canada. The agency was engaged to drive earned media attention, demonstrating WestJet’s commitment to going above and beyond for the brand’s guests. The objective was set at 1 billion impressions.

With this being WestJet’s sixth Christmas Miracle video and its largest and most ambitious activation to date, the agency needed to create compelling narratives that would sustain media interest not just during the 12 Flights of Christmas, but also for the hero video launch in December. The brand needed to tell the story of how these 12 ideas came to fruition: the WestJet Cares for Kids program and WestJet’s partnership with the Boys and Girls Club of Canada.

The Target

WestJet wanted to focus on those closest to the company – WestJet employees and the communities in which they operate. By bringing the Christmas Miracle home to Canada, WestJet wanted to re-ignite the passion and spirit of WestJet employees, giving them 12 opportunities to demonstrate WestJet’s fun and caring culture. Guests could truly witness, and interact with, WestJetters, providing a joyful and sharable holiday experience for everyone. For media, the goal was to convince them to share this story in the various communities across Canada, highlight employees' efforts, the way in which WestJet cares about it communities and reigniting excited throughout the country with the question, where will it be next!?

Insights and Strategy

As 2017 marked the 10th anniversary of the WestJet Cares for Kids program, the brand wanted to involve youth of the Boys and Girls Club of Canada, a program partner, in the Christmas Miracle. WestJet travelled to Toronto to speak with the local Boys and Girls Club of Canada chapter, knowing that if they asked the Club’s youth what Christmas means to them, they’d get some remarkable responses. The agency then based the 12 different stunts on those responses, making Christmas miracles come to life in a big way.

The Plan

Due to the complexity of the 12-day, cross-country campaign, the media relations plan was rolled out in several phases.

The agency worked with WestJet’s media relations team to provide pre-activation and on-site support for the 12 Flights of Christmas. The team knew that localizing the media relations for the 12 Flights of Christmas was crucial to minimizing media fatigue, therefore it developed targeted media lists and tailored materials for each market, including 12 different pitches and unique storylines, one for each activation. The agency invited media to attend their local activation, leveraging celebrity involvement and playing on the element of secrecy and surprise to entice them to come and witness the magic. (Getting airport security clearance for all the different media in each market was no small feat.) For one activation, this included having media on an airplane to witness a concert in the sky!

On the day of the Christmas Miracle hero video launch, a pitching blitz was conducted by the brand’s earned media specialists across the country. It was during this round of media outreach that the team announced that the activations were based on the ideas from the Boys and Girls Club of Canada youth, rooting the narrative in why and how WestJet created the video. The agency connected the story back to local Boys and Girls Club chapters in each market, leveraging the compelling and personal stories of the local children who had a hand in WestJet’s Christmas Miracle, while also highlighting the company’s 10-year-long partnership with the Club.

The Results

The results from WestJet’s 2017 Christmas Miracle campaign, 12 Flights of Christmas were obtained using Edelman’s proprietary social listening software, other media monitoring tools and native analytics’ platforms. The campaign generated 3,717,535,794 impressions, 777 media hits, 42 interviews, 92% of articles contained key message pull-through and it reflected a 98% positive sentiment

The campaign tripled the ambitious 1 billion impressions objective. The penetration and quality of hits in key markets across Canada resulted in coverage that more than doubled in engagements, with a total of 47K. Furthermore, the number of media interviews increased by 121%. The media and public’s reaction to being a part of WestJet’s Christmas Miracle was overwhelmingly positive; especially in markets not often targeted for brand activations, such as Halifax, Regina, Winnipeg and Hamilton. WestJet’s website received 480,000 visits and hashtag usages of #WestJetChristmas totaled 3.9K.

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