By Ryan Rothman
One of JetBlue’s business issues is that it has a much smaller media budget than other larger competitors in the airline industry. They needed to find a way to connect with consumers in their home base of NYC, but New Yorkers walk by thousands of ads each day in one of the most cluttered advertising markets in the world and may not pay attention to advertisements around the city.
Since JetBlue is based in New York City, they wanted to reach locals that would be traveling in and out of the city. Specifically, they wanted to target New Yorkers that travel by bus around the city.
Jet Blue decided that the best way to reach New Yorkers was by rewarding them for paying attention while waiting at bus shelters. JetBlue worked with Mullen Lowe to produce a series of posters that prompted commuters to steal them from the bus stations and redeem them for free flights or other New York experiences like tickets to sporting events and free ice cream. The benefit for this type of advertisement is that it reached a huge audience with an always on message – even when the posters were taken, a message was left in its place. This campaign added value to consumers’ lives through unique social value, entertainment and incentives.
The 181 posters created for this campaign were placed in bus shelters across all five boroughs of New York City. This campaign utilized paid and out-of-home advertisements, but also achieved strong earned media results with more than 65 million earned media impressions worldwide over 30 days.
This campaign aligned with JetBlue’s brand purpose, as it allowed consumers to take adventures and travel in and out of the city. Since New Yorkers can be hard to reach through all of the noise in the city’s advertising market, JetBlue and Mullen Lowe recognized that incentives—especially those with a high value in a certain area—can be successful in getting consumer attention.
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