2018 was a particularly naughty year in global politics. So, as an airline that’s famous for being nice (Nice enough to win Airline of the Year five years running) we thought we’d do our bit to help get the world be a little nicer. The Nicest Christmas Ever intentionally leaned on global media themes in order to earn consideration and awareness from a global audience. Lead by a group of Kiwi kids and assisted by Air New Zealand, the idea was to launch a movement to ensure that Santa’s Naughty List was shorter than it’s ever been before.

January is Air NZ’s busiest sales period. In order to fill seats, they needed to raise consideration and awareness from a global audience. While they are well-known at home, outside of New Zealand they’re not on travellers’ radars. Competing against much larger competitors, with much larger budgets, they needed an idea that would thrive through social, build them a cookie pool, earning them an audience that they could then retarget with a sales message.

2018 saw extensive coverage of International Summits.

We created a Christmas campaign based around a Summit of Naughty Kids with a US delegate modelled on Trump.

A film - launched online- introduced the Summit of the Naughty Kids. Through social, we repurposed a well-known slogan and encouraged audiences to vote for their naughtiest friends.

Over the past decade Air New Zealand’s Christmas strategy has been to spread to the world a uniquely Kiwi take on Christmas. They’re also a brand that has historically celebrated the “underdog story” as illustrated in their own success as a small airline from the bottom of the world making it big on the world stage. The Nicest Christmas Ever reflected this story by showing a bunch of kids from little old New Zealand doing their part to make the world a better place.

We created a Christmas campaign we knew the world’s media would pay attention to, basing our narrative around a Summit of Naughty Kids with a US delegate modelled on Trump.

After featuring in our online launch film, we repurposed Donald Trump’s slogan to Make Christmas Great Again, giving away iconic red hats emblazoned with our new slogan to our fans on social. Then through online promotions, we encouraged our audience to rat out their naughtiest friends in return for flight deals and merchandise. Finally, a partnership with New Zealand’s favourite cookie manufacturer sweetened the deal – we created bespoke Christmas cookies, complete with copies of naughty and nice lists, and gave them away to our social audience and those flying with us over Christmas.

Campaign Launched November 30th 2018 across Air NZ’s social channels: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram. The target audience was Australian, New Zealand and North American Travellers

With a media budget of just $200,000 our online film received 11.3 million views, PR coverage generated 3 Billion media impressions and $20 million in earned media, a return on investment of 2500%.

Remarketing audiences then contributed to Air New Zealand’s most successful January Sale ever, with revenue up 20% year on year.