First and foremost, don’t forget that it’s Fathers Day on the 15th!! 🙂
Today I watched a great piece of emotional marketing from the guys at WestJet – following on from their Christmas Miracle episode that got them a lot of much sought after eye balls and engagement during the holiday season. They have come up with another video that is guaranteed to bring a tear to your eye, whoever you are. It brought one to mine and inspired me to write this post.
First off, I think it’s a great initiative and more importantly, it comes across as genuine. The premise could come across as very scripted and in this day and age of digital communication, manufactured. The video though tells the story in a human way. It pulls at your heart strings for sure, and you have no choice but to invest emotionally (unless you are some sort of robot)
When watching the video I allowed my emotional buy in to control my actions. A tear or two was shed, but it was in happiness at such a great gesture from both the company and the employee that took part to provide what can only be described as perhaps the perfect fathers day gift for Mr Marc Grimard. It appealed to the human part of me! I emphasise this point, because it’s something I repeatedly communicate with my students and clients. Everyone of us that is in business is selling a product or service to PEOPLE, our customers and prospects are PEOPLE and as such our content should be created with PEOPLE in mind.
What WestJet has done again with this particular marketing message is appeal to the emotional side of us as human beings. Which I have to say is a good thing. The idea and the execution I think, were pretty good. And as a marketing tool, it’s working pretty well. Within 5 hours of being posted on Mashable, it was shared 2500 times. 2 days on YouTube and it’s surpassed the 90,000 view mark and I am sure this number will swell rapidly over the next few days as more and more people watch it and more importantly. More and more people share it to their networks. Releasing the video just under 2 weeks before fathers day is a good shout as well. Give people the chance to see it and perhaps play on that emotional buy in, where they jump online and book that trip home for the weekend to spend it with Dad on the 15th.
Regardless at this point of the financial ROI that will be generated from this campaign, the emotional ROI is high. Until Christmas last year, I had never heard of WestJet, they were on my radar after the Christmas miracle -I’ve never flown with them, but should I get the chance, I will. With this campaign they have cemented themselves in my bank of great examples of companies doing good things when it comes to digital marketing.
I take my hat off to you WestJet. Watch the heartwarming video below.
