• by Keith Lusby , May 22, 2013

Category: Media Innovation

Agency: Mediahub from Mullen

Client: JetBlue

Title: Get Away With It

Challenge: To establish the JetBlue Getaways vacation product, we had three specific challenges: 

1. Establish trust: Consumers are uncomfortable trusting all their vacation needs to an airline.  Online Travel Agents (OTAs) like Orbitz and Expedia are much more established in this space.

2. Change behavior: Inspire our audience to explore our Getaways offering in order to book a vacation. Not only are airline websites not thought of as one-stop shopping, but they are also not usually part of the vacation booking process until after the destination has been chosen.

3. Overcome modest budget: Our communications support for this service is less than Southwest Airlines spends in a week, and less than OTA sites spend in a month .

Creative and Media Solution: Our starting point was the belief that every stand-out strategy always starts with a single, unexpected and clear insight. Our springboard: People may not be willing to plan a packaged vacation with an airline, but they will put one heck of an effort into winning one.

From this insight, our online only “Get Away With It” live game show was born. This was the perfect platform, as it tapped into nostalgia, reminding people when packaged vacations were the norm and given away as grand prizes on venerable game shows like “The Price Is Right” and “Wheel of Fortune.” The JetBlue twist was to invent our own show that was unique and highly entertaining. The questions were challenging and fun and served as proof points for all the exotic locations to which JetBlue travels.

The media support had to be as different as the concept itself. After all, the show would not be a success without high, consistent participation demand and high program viewership. Three activation pillars:

1. Utility   

*  First-time TVGuide.com units that allowed our messaging to look like programming within their TV schedule.

*  TV snipes ran in game shows and syndicated sitcoms to recruit contestants and drive tune in.

*  Mobile advertising to include add-to-calendar functionality, and we drove over 26,000+ calendar adds. 

2. Entertain

*  Streamed the game show live in expandable rich media banners on sites like Boston.com and TVGuide.com. We were one of the first brands to bring live content to banners, and people watched an average of nine minutes.

*  Built interactive “storefront” displays that allowed crowds of people to play an interactive game show version.

3. Socialize 

*  Used Viggle to spur demand by challenging users to quizzes and serving them video content from the show. JetBlue was the first brand to use Viggle in conjunction with an online-only show.

*  Created articles on BuzzFeed in the tone of the site and surrounded that content with JetBlue messaging. 

Results:

Business highlights:

*  Familiarity with the brand increased by 117%, and linkage between JetBlue and Getaways increased by 243%

Media highlights:

*  An average of over 19,000 consumers tuned in to watch the show on the website each day

*  People watched the show within our rich media banners as well. In fact, on average they tuned in for over nine minutes of a 12-minute show.

*  CTR for the entire campaign was over 140% higher than industry benchmarks