“Reach Across the Aisle” was a social experiment hosted at 30,000 feet amongst 150 everyday flyers on a flight from Boston to Phoenix. They were put to the ultimate test: to embrace compromise and unanimously agree on a single destination in order to win roundtrip tickets. The voting was led by our “Speaker of the Plane” who guided customers through the process with just the right amount of wit, humor and gravitas. It began with a choice of domestic or international travel. From there the vote narrowed to a choice of specific destinations. Customers disagreed, debated, lobbied and ultimately achieved what D.C. could not. Now that JetBlue customers had proven it possible, maybe their actions could inspire others to work together.

Timing is everything. “Reach Across the Aisle” was initially conceived in late 2013 and carefully shepherded until the political heat was at just the right peak. An election season for the ages, a death of a Supreme Court Justice and a stalemate in the Capitol proved to be the right moment for the message. The video capturing the inflight social experiment was promoted through paid social, video seeding and a partnership with the politically-minded site The Daily Beast.

To date, we’ve documented 650 traditional earned PR placements resulting in over 300M impressions (equivalent to $1.01M) from broadcast and traditional online outlets worldwide including the Today show, Fox & Friends, Mashable, The Huffington Post, U.S. News, Fortune magazine, Upworthy and CNN. Those press placements have been shared more than 69,000 times across social platforms. The completion rate (71%) crushed all benchmarks, including JetBlue’s gold standard, Election Protection.

We’ve also earned more than 50M social impressions as a result of influencers organically sharing our video including, George Takei (Facebook), Official Facebook of the President of Costa Rica and Bette Midler (Twitter).

From the nation’s capital to the presidential campaign trail, headlines report that America is a country divided. Or is it? That’s the question JetBlue asked when challenging 150 strangers to put differences aside, Reach Across the Aisle and work together.

With the world paying attention to America’s feuding politicians, JetBlue seized the opportunity to conduct and film an in-flight social experiment, testing customers’ ability to find common ground. Strangers from all walks of life successfully compromised, which sparked a global dialogue.

JetBlue is a brand people love. Yes, people love the JetBlue experience, which puts the customer first. But people also love JetBlue’s playfulness and wit. Almost four years ago, JetBlue brought some much-needed laughter to a presidential race consumed by rancor. Four years later, the tension is heightening once again. “Reach Across the Aisle” was a social experiment conducted among 150 everyday fliers to see whether they could overcome their own self-interests for the greater good. And in classic JetBlue fashion, it was done in a way that brought some much-needed humor with it.

As a smaller airline with an even smaller budget (they’re outspent anywhere from 2.5x to 6x by its competitors), every JetBlue initiative must earn an unfair share of attention. This means taking on issues the consumer cares about rather than simply talking about JetBlue offerings.

Using JetBlue’s mission — to inspire humanity — as our guide, we sought to take on a cultural issue standing in the way of our collective humanity: the dysfunction in American politics.

This would be provocative particularly during the 2016 election season, which was breeding unprecedented divisiveness in the U.S.