Easyjet-Sick Bag Poetry

EASYJET - SICK BAG POETRY

Last April we featured Delta as our coverstory for it’s ‘tray table art’ project, where illustrators customised the back of tray tables on a Boeing 767. At the time we suggested airlines look at opportunities for using other ‘dead space’ for marketing promotions - for example the back of sick bags.

In February easyJet did exactly that with a poetry competition that was launched to coincide with Valentine’s Day. easyJet launched what it claimed was the first ever poetry competition that must be submitted on an in-flight sick bag.

Passengers were given the chance to win a pair of return flights in exchange for writing a poem on the back of a sick bag, taking a photo of it and uploading it to social media by the end of February using #lovesicksonnets.

Rather than a wheeze dreamt up by the marketing department, easyJet claimed that the inspiration for the project actually came from passengers themselves. The airline said it found that a lot of passengers had been spending time on its European flights writing verses and messages on the back of sick bags, which then led to the competition.

That’s a claim that’s not possible to prove either way, but when easyJet launched the competition on February 1st, that angle did find a receptive audience in the British, international and marketing press including The Sun, The Herald, Metro, the Huffington Post and Campaign.

Lots of consumer facing brands try to dream up stunts or promotions around Valentine’s Day, but few succeed in cutting through the noise. easyJet however hit upon an unusual angle that meant it did get extensive media exposure. Given that the actual cost of the competition will have been very little, the modest investment in

terms of time spent creating the tactic paid off handsomely.

At the same time, when we looked at easyJet’s social media, we were surprised at how little follow through there was on the airline’s channels - especially as this was a social-led campaign.

For example on Facebook, where it has 1.5 million fans, easyJet only mentioned the competition once - on February 2nd, when it was launched. After that there was nothing more about it, even though easyJet did feature a man proposing to his girlfriend on a flight to Rome on 14 February.

Our first reaction was that this might have been because few people were entering, but that wasn’t the case.

Engagement was actually very good. A look at Instagram shows that there are 250+ examples of ‘sick bag poetry’ using easyJet’s designated hashtag of #lovesicksonnets, with many more on Twitter.

easyJet came up with a really good idea. It was different, an actual first as opposed to another ‘me too’ tactic, and you can see why a brand like easyJet would do something like this:

It is fun, it involves passengers, it appeals to a more youthful audience and it gives off the impression of a brand that doesn’t take itself too seriously. We just wonder if easyJet could have made much more of this.

KEY TAKE-AWAY

In a campaign of this nature, it is worth looking at how you can maximise the value of your investment and increase engagement, especially on social media. This was a great campaign, but arguably it could have gone further.

Here are just a few things easyJet could have done:

It could have featured a poem of the week. It could have had content giving tips about how to write the perfect poem (possibly with guest posts from poets) - possibly in the form of short snackable videos.

It could have also offered up smaller weekly prizes (e.g. swag or discount vouchers) as an incentive. And as well as featuring regular poems it could have created content around the people behind it. Who wrote the poem? Where were they going? What was the inspiration? Where do they hope to go if they win the prize?

After all, if you have several hundred entries like this, you actually have several hundred content opportunities.