To inspire Americans to get out of the office and take a vacation, JetBlue Vacations created limited-edition “Office Souvenirs” to serve as real, physical reminders of the need to create memories they’d actually want to remember.

Implementation

We anchored efforts with an e-commerce site, ShopJetBlue, to inspire and drive purchase of Office Souvenirs, treating the limited-edition merchandise like a true product PR launch, focused on getting the right items in the hands of the right press.

Timeline

Pre-launch: Deploy media mailers, seed PR assets, embargo news to top-tier travel, lifestyle and business press.

Launch: Drive pop-up and ShopJetBlue.com visits to expanded travel, lifestyle and business press; leverage social amplification and customer engagement to coincide with the launch of the pop-up shop and site going live.

Post-launch: Engage advertising, marketing press; re-targeted pop-up shop visitors via email, reminding and encouraging them to book a JetBlue Vacation.

Scale

With limited funds, we created for the first time, unique, shoppable Instagram ads and Facebook video posts that drove customers to ShopJetBlue.com. We also specifically targeted office workers on Reddit threads to deepen the engagement and drive relevant, relatable conversations.

These hilariously sad reminders of time spent in the office aimed to inspire people to take a vacation, actually got people to take notice and take action.

The integrated effort drove more than 401MM earned social and traditional media impressions. Dedicated coverage included praise from 21 outlets such as Yahoo! Style, Fast Company, Fortune, Daily Mail and Thrillist, as well as an organic tweet from work/life balance advocate and influencer, Arianna Huffington. Advertising equivalency of earned media coverage totaled $647K (via TrendKite), over 10X our paid media investment.

“Sometimes a dumb joke is best when taken to its illogical extreme. That, and given how much people like to talk about their lack of vacation time, it’ll get boatloads of earned media.” –Fast Company

“If you didn't already want to bust out of your cubicle, JetBlue's latest collection of office souvenirs will make you reconsider.” –Fortune

“As a reminder to those perpetual office-dwellers that there is life outside of work, JetBlue has come up with a line of “office souvenirs” it hopes will poke fun at the problem and inspire those people to turn PDFs into PTO.” –The Points Guy

Additionally, the campaign increased the JetBlue Vacations website traffic and bookings during August 2017. Tracked and measured by JetBlue Analytics and benchmarked against August 2016 performance, the JetBlue Vacations website traffic increased by 26% (to 1.3M), bookings increased by 9% and revenue increased by more than $3M — a 12% increase.

In a recent study, 91% of adults said that some of their best memories come from vacation. Yet, as a country, we’ve stopped going on vacation. So that raised the question: what kind of memories are we making? We decided to deploy an earned-first campaign that put limited-edition vacation souvenirs in the hands of influential press and influencers to help us remind customers Americans need to take vacations. We leveraged a press seeding drop, hosted a press-friendly photo shoot and creative asset collection and popped up a souvenir store in New York’s Fi-Di district to extend storytelling opportunities.

Target audience

Working adults within JetBlue’s brand target, the Human Class: 42 million cost-conscious, economy-class travelers who fly for business and pleasure. They’re not elite frequent fliers with “status.”

PR planning

We integrated PR planning throughout the creative process and key to the kick-off of this activation, from developing shareworthy media mailer assets to selecting a press-friendly pop-up location and deploying a proactive storytelling strategy.

Approach

We choreographed the PR approach by introducing key media to the exclusive collection through several touchpoints resulting in substantial conversations and coverage. We deployed 30 themed media mailers to top-tier media ahead of launch. We drove media and consumers to our Financial District pop-up shop to preview the collection and further legitimize the products. We illustrated the collection through a curated assets package including editorial, product, and event imagery to ensure consistency in media coverage.

At a time when cutting amenities and introducing new fees seemed like the only way to raise revenue, JetBlue stuck to its founding mission—“to bring humanity back to air travel”—and committed to finding another way. Structural cost-cutting across the organization meant a 14% reduction in the marketing budget from the previous year, on top of competitors’ expensive taste for our market share: they were outspending JetBlue ten to one.

The best option was increasing ancillary revenue: add-ons and upgrades to existing bookings. The fastest way to substantially increase the dollar amount of bookings was to add a hotel. Thus, growing JetBlue Vacations, JetBlue’s air and hotel vacation offering, became the critical business need for JetBlue in 2017. The brief was to inspire people to book a vacation with JetBlue Vacations in a smart, surprising, and buzzworthy way.

Business objectives included increases in JetBlue Vacations traffic, bookings, and revenue.