The airline industry in Canada has become increasingly competitive, with new “low-cost” airlines catering to Millennials and Gen Z. WestJet needed to show these younger generations that it was in tune with their travel needs and culture; encouraging them to choose WestJet for their future travel plans.
Research shows that travellers love to post vacation photos on social media -- showing off to their friends back home. In fact, there are 166 million posts on Instagram with the #vacation hashtag. Building off this insight, we wanted to create a means for travellers to extend their reach beyond their followers on social media, giving them the opportunity to make the ultimate vacation flex.
So we launched “Vacation Flex,” giving travellers the chance to post their vacation pics on billboards when they booked a trip with WestJet. To seed the campaign, we ran out-of-home ads across the country, and engaged travel influencers in key regions. Next, we rolled out a video series on social media, embracing meme-culture, to promote the new program. And while only so many billboards were up for grabs, we gave everyone that visited our landing page flight deals worth bragging about.
We reached 18.8+ million earned impressions after less than 3 days of launching. And with ads driving to our landing page, where we offered flight and vacation deals, we saw an ROI of more than 1024%.
