Air New Zealand, EasyJet, Jet Airways - Valentine's Day Promotions

Air New Zealand, EasyJet, Jet Airways - Valentine's Day Promotions

Valentine’s Day is a popular annual event for airline marketing teams to build touching, love-inspired campaigns around. Like flight itself, love transcends borders and the “Day of Lovers” is celebrated by many cultures around the world.

This year, a number of airlines chose to think more broadly about love, focusing on the love that exists between family and friends, in addition to romantic love. On January 27th, in a campaign that aligns with their #goingthedistance tagline, Air New Zealand put out a call using Twitter and Facebook, to see who their customers would ‘go the distance’ for this Valentine’s day.

The original tweet – accompanied by an inspirational video – was retweeted 39 times, liked more than 200 times, and replied to 64 times with touching stories of love across distance.

The airline selected a New Zealand woman who missed a long-time friend in England as their winner, and created a second video where she tells her story and gets a free flight to the UK to surprise the friend. That well-liked video was posted to Twitter and Facebook on February 13th.

easyJet ran a similar campaign called #LoveConnection, and likewise created a heart-warming video about a young British woman who’s been dating a Dutch man long distance for five years.

They gave her a free trip to see him on Valentine’s Day. At the airport before she departed, the airline displayed a picture of the couple together on a large digital screen, and even had cabin crew on the flight tell her love story to the rest of the passengers. And of course, there was Steffen waiting for her with a huge hug at the airport when she arrived.

Jet Airways opted to produce a video called ‘The Other Girl’ which depicts a young man heartbroken after a pre-Valentine’s breakup.

Through the video we see him looking dejected and dragging himself though daily life, but his mood begins to improve thanks to another woman who is texting him and supporting him. He books a Jet Airways flight to Kolkata to visit the mystery woman, and we see at the end of the video that it has been his Grandmother sending her love the whole time.

Key Take-Away

In the USA alone, it’s estimated that 55% of people plan something special for Valentine’s Day, and the average spend per person is close to USD $150.00. Don’t let card companies, florists, and the candy-makers take the share of the pie! Love is a beautiful reason to travel, so inspire your passengers to visit someone they love.

It also shouldn’t matter that other airlines will be doing the same thing. As the examples we’ve highlighted show, if a campaign has the right kind of seasonal tone and it is executed well, passengers will respond.