West Jet-Christmas Miracle

WEST JET - CHRISTMAS MIRACLE

WestJet’s annual “Christmas Miracle” has over the years become something of a stand-out among festive airline campaigns because of its scale, creativity, and the way each miracle gives back to local communities and / or rewards passengers.

For example, in 2016 WestJet’s Christmas Miracle involved staff hosting a surprise party for residents of Fort McMurray, which had been badly affected by the Summer fires a few months earlier. In 2015, staff performed 12,000 ‘mini miracles’ for passengers across Canada, the US and in London.

Meanwhile in 2014, WestJet brought Santa Claus, snow and a ton of gifts to the community of Nuevo Renacer near Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic.

Each campaign has generated a lot of positive coverage for the airline and millions of video views, leading Forbes to say: “The Real ‘Christmas Miracle’ Of WestJet’s Viral Video: Millions In Free Advertising.”

This year the theme was “The 12 Flights of Christmas.” For twelve consecutive days in the run- up to Christmas, WestJetters and special guests spread holiday joy to travellers across different Canadian airports by performing ‘miracles.’ . For the first time in WestJet’s history, all of the highly-visual “miracles” were also shown in real-time on Facebook Live.

WestJet social media fans were also given the chance to input on the direction of each miracle. For example, one of the 12 days involved fans choosing “domestic” or “international.” They chose “international”, so the WestJet team headed to Edmonton International Airport where a massive gift box was placed in the terminal.

With the help of Santa, dressed in WestJet blue instead of traditional red, passengers unwrapped the box. Each time there were more boxes to unwrap, some contained items such as headphones, other gift card, until passengers reached the final present, free flights.

Once the twelve flights of Christmas had finished, WestJet had one more reveal. In a video on December 11th, WestJet showed that the inspiration for the twelve miracles had been suggestions from the St Alban’s Boys and Girls Club. As a result, the whole campaign was meant to symbolise Christmas magic through the eyes of children.

Just as in previous years, the campaign got a huge pick-up on social media. Each of the twelve day videos received views in the six figures, while the final campaign video was seen over a million times.

It was a lovely theme, however it took us a while to piece all the different elements together to figure out how everything worked, and some of it was confusing.

For example, when we saw that social media fans were asked to vote between ‘domestic’ and ‘international’, we first of all assumed that WestJet would be doing something in the international departures area of a major Canadian airport, not in the main terminal hall of Edmonton International Airport where the prize winners included mainly domestic passengers.

As a result, we’d agree with One Mile At a Time’s review of the campaign:

“It’s a really cute video, and I love that they have kids come up with the ideas for what they should do, and that this aspect of it remained a surprise for so long. It’s a great video, it’s just not quite as cohesive or overthe-top as the 2013 video.

“Still, very well done, WestJet, and if you have a few minutes, it’s definitely worth a watch.”

KEY TAKE-AWAY

In a sense WestJet has become a victim of its own success. The 2017 campaign follows five years of other Christmas miracles.

For example, the one that One Mile at a Time still references, four years after it happened, is the 2013 video which featured “Santa” asking passengers on two Calgary bound flights what they wanted for Christmas with those presents appearing on the luggage carousel on arrival.

In isolation, the 2017 Christmas Miracle had a real wow factor about it. However, the bar is being raised higher for WestJet every year, and the challenge for them is now how can they beat what went on before.