benchmark report
airline marketing
#hashtag westjet
cityselfie KLM
Selfies have taken the social media realm by storm over the years and are a phenomenon most popular among young adults. Tools such as Vine and Instagram are commonly privy to these types of posts, while TIME Magazine even built a database to rank the most selfie users per capita, calling it ‘The selfiest cities in the world .’ To capitalize on this phenomenon and the selfie audience, KLM conjured up the ‘CitySelfie ’ contest, wherein competitors take a 20-second selfie video that also displays a 360 degree virtual tour of their favourite local spot in their own city for the chance to win two round-the-world tickets. All entries are displayed on the KLM microsite in an interactive map of the globe . Applicants are mostly locals who are eager to share their special place in their town, and
JUNE 2014 ISSUE
WESTJET
a jury will judge and decide on a winner after the deadline of June 9th. The concept is meant to reinforce the notion that locals really do know best when it comes to hot spots and trendy destinations in their city. The local connoisseur shares their sense of pride for their hometown, all the while creating a dialogue between the airline and its global audience. The hassle-free task, combined with a highly user-friendly website, allowed for an easy entry into the contest and hundreds of applicants have uploaded their videos so far from locations as diverse as Vancouver, Barcelona, Tokyo and Sao Paulo.
Two years ago, late night television show host Jimmy Kimmel popularized ‘mean tweets ,’ a segment on the show during which celebrities read mean Twitter comments directed at them. Since its inception, the YouTube videos have generated millions upon millions of views. Drawing inspiration from this, WestJet produced its own version of mean tweets wherein its employees read mixed reviews aimed at WestJet’s Twitter account and titled it ‘WestJetters read tweets- Hashtag #WestJet .’
receive por tions of the prof its twice per year (once in November and again in May). The airline produces videos and debuts them at each of the prof it sharing events and then publishes them on YouTube . Humour seems to be the common theme for WestJet, both past and present, as displayed in this April Fool’s video from 2012. ‘WestJetters read tweets’ was published on May 23rd 2014 and has generated only around 13,000 views so far, despite the potentially viral nature of the video.
The video was recorded as par t of WestJet’s prof it sharing event, as WestJet’s model means that each employee, also known as WestJetters,
6
EXPERIENTIAL SOCIAL DIGITAL TRADITIONAL