In the 'stunt-vertising' spirit of the season

The Maple Leaf bar in London, England is where Canadians come together for a taste of home. On Nov. 27, 2014 many of them were thinking of loved ones back home whom they wouldn’t get to see this holiday season - until two pilots announced all 200 Canadians in the establishment would be getting round trip tickets home for the holidays - all thanks to Air Canada.

Christiano lives in the Dominican Republic. He had one Christmas wish - a horse so he could re-start his horse-and-cart delivery business. He could hardly believe his eyes when Santa, dressed in blue, strode across the beach with a white horse behind him for Christiano - all thanks to WestJet.

These online videos depicting these events are part of the airlines’ holiday campaigns. “Traditionally this sort of thing is called ‘experiential marketing’ but I like to call it ‘stunt-vertising,’” says Dave Girolami, partner, FIRE - your marketers.

Corey Evans, manager, sponsorship, community investment and experiential marketing, WestJet, agrees. “It’s an advertising campaign wrapped up in a physical location. It could be a virtual campaign - it could based solely on a platform on the Internet - but I think of it more in the real world; stunt-related.” WestJet introduced its first such holiday campaign three years ago and last year’s went beyond anyone’s wildest expectations, when it received about 35 million views and more than a billion Twitter impressions. "We actually weren’t able to calculate all the media impressions we got because it was so worldwide," Evans says. "It was seen in every country in the world."

According to Girolami, the objective of stunt-vertising is usually brand awareness, brand identity, creating shareable content and creating buzz about brands online. 

“It’s called ‘earned media.’ Campaigns can be looked at in three ways: paid, owned and earned," he explains. "‘Paid’ is what they paid to get out there. In this case, Air Canada and WestJet paid to get those things done. But what they get out of that is ‘earned media,’ so they get the residual effect of people sharing and commenting and talking about it, including news and media that exponentially they couldn't buy anyway. They hope they get a return on that initial paid investment by getting what would essentially be the earned media of what that value would be.”

Evans says the potential of online stunt-vertising is great from a cost standpoint: “We had no online spend with the video last year; we did some posts on Twitter and Facebook and of course we ended up getting 35 million views. When you pay to have a TV spot during a Blue Jays game, you know the audience you’re going to get and it pretty much ends there. But with online, from a cost-efficiency standpoint, there’s just so much opportunity.”

This year’s WestJet video started with a theme of giving back. “We talked about wanting the theme this year to be the spirit of giving and we tossed around the idea that last year ‘Socks and Underwear Guy’ got a lot of press for saying he wanted socks and underwear. But there are a lot of places where that’s a really meaningful gift.  We then decided we really wanted to help people who needed it.”

The campaign that resulted was centered around granting the Christmas wishes of the people of a small village in the Dominican Republic. 

“Obviously brand association falls in with that but when we set out to do it, we set out to tell a great story and create a great experience for our WestJetters that are involved and our guests; in this case, the people who live in Nuevo Renacer.”

Duncan Bureau, vice-president global sales at Air Canada, notes that those lucky patrons of the Maple Leaf pub who got their hands on tickets have one year to redeem their trip, in case they can't make the timing work for the holidays. The story for Air Canada first started with a special recognition of their own staff who often are away from their families this time of year (depicted in the Bringing You Home video), and then the idea was carried over to offer a similar experience to this select group in London.

Girolami says stunt-vertising has a long history in advertising but companies are now seeking more technologically advanced ways of reaching audiences. “The trend is trying to marry up how can you make these really interactive and experientially memorable events using advanced technology, taking risks and thinking of innovative ways to execute it in a sophisticated way; this is how companies are trying to one-up each other.”

As for deciding on the success of such an initiative, he says there are a number of ways to assess. “One is they will look to see if the content is trending (assessing likes, views, shares, etc). They’ll add those up to determine how successful the earned media really was and quantify that by adding certain metrics. The only thing that is hard to track is direct return on investment when it comes to sales... It probably didn’t enlist a bunch of new tickets or create more people booking flights. Intrinsically, people have a set amount of money for travel and they’ll probably think of WestJet every time as one possible carrier when they have to make a decision of one over the other. It definitely influences purchase decision but probably doesn’t increase revenue.”

But some may measure success by the amount of tears brought to the eye. Girolami also points out that emotional resonance has always been one of the key elements to effective stunt-vertising.

“People love to see other people winning at something and getting something. It’s a positive gesture attached to a brand wanting to make themselves look like they care."

Evans agrees, saying WestJet's campaigns are successful because “I think everyone loves Christmas stories and I think that that’s why we all have our favorite Christmas movies. This is a holiday story and at that time of year people like to have stories and be engaged in their communities a bit more. So I think in the truest sense it’s like Elf - it’s a Christmas story that people like.”

View the videos here:

Air Canada, Gift of Home

WestJet, Spirit of Giving