WestJet has staged a Christmas miracle for some of its passengers — a holiday stunt that has proved a triumph of social media marketing.
On a snowy Nov. 21, WestJet set up interactive video screens in airport departure lounges in Toronto and Hamilton, which allowed two planeloads of Calgary-bound guests to scan their boarding passes and speak to Santa.
Santa, clad in WestJet blue, asked flyers what they’d like for Christmas. Passengers didn’t know their answers and reactions were being recorded by hidden cameras.
Mostly, kids wanted straightforward gifts — a toy train, a Barbie doll, an Android tablet. Some adults made humble requests: socks, underwear, scarves. One asked for a diamond ring, another for a car. Several asked for husbands.
Not every passenger played along, but those who did looked pretty tickled that Santa knew them by name and joked about their Christmas wishes.
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While those passengers were in the air, WestJet volunteers in Calgary spent four frantic hours buying and wrapping gifts. When the planes touched down four hours later, those 357 separate presents came out of the baggage carousel, while more hidden cameras recorded their shocked amazement.
Not everyone received exactly what they’d requested. The women who asked for husbands got Ken dolls. The woman who wished for an automobile received a toy car. But a woman who’d asked for a diamond ring got her wish — as did those adults who had asked for a flat-screen TV or airfare to fly home for Christmas.
WestJet packaged the footage from 19 different hidden cameras into a slick five-minute, 26-second ad. It launched on YouTube on Monday morning, and was soon “trending” on Twitter, causing grown adults to sob at their desks. It was manipulative. It was sentimental. It was a paean to Christmas commercialism. And it was utterly brilliant.
As children, many of us grew up believing in a Santa who was always watching, who could read our minds, the Santa who sees you when you’re sleeping, who knows when you’re awake. In a stealthy, slightly creepy way, WestJet, with its hidden cameras, made that fantasy real. The incredulous looks on the faces of the passengers, adults and child alike, when their dream gifts come off the carousel, are the real power of the video. Viewers aren’t crying because a bunch of middle-class airline passengers got free stuff. They’re crying because WestJet gave those travellers the gift of magic. Of surprise.
And so, in an era of PVRs and fast-forward buttons, where no advertiser who buys a TV commercial can have any guarantee that anyone ever saw it, the WestJet Christmas miracle is being enthusiastically shared on Facebook and Twitter, as a tiny, perfect Christmas movie.
Granted, there are critics who complained that WestJet gave away expensive gifts to random people who could already afford to fly, instead of donating to the needy or virtuous.
Such criticisms obtusely miss the point. This wasn’t a disinterested act of charity. It was a marketing campaign, and a supremely effective one.
The video, despite its subversive appearance, is a commercial — not just for WestJet, but also for its partners in this venture, including Best Buy and the CrossIron Mills Mall in Balzac, Alta.
WestJet can’t afford the conventional advertising budget of a major carrier. Instead, it strives to position and market itself as the hip upstart, the irreverent airline with a sense of humour about itself.
“Fun is part of our DNA!” chirps Robert Palmer, WestJet’s manager of public relations.
“This was very much a reflection of our corporate identity. We like to have fun with our guests, and on social media.”
Fun? In part. But WestJet is counting on our complicity and co-operation to do its marketing. The company pledged a major donation of free plane trips to Ronald McDonald House if the video got 200,000 views, which it did within hours.
So is WestJet’s strategy naughty? Or nice? By exploiting our appetite for holiday sentimentality, does the company turn us into credulous drones, naïvely promoting its brand via social media? Well, yes. But perhaps that’s the price we gladly pay for the very real delight at the heart of this advertising artistry, for the surprising gift of magic and joy WestJet gave us all.
