This time last year, you may remember I blogged about WestJet Airlines in Canada surprising its passengers with a trip to see Santa before they boarded their flight, only to be surprised at the luggage carousel with whatever gift they’d requested from Santa. I did feel for those who said they’d be happy with a new scarf or socks while other passengers received plasma TVs and games consoles. The moral of this story is to always tell Santa what you really want.
This year it was the turn or Air Canada to pull out all the PR stops as seen here at PRmoment.com. At a pub in London frequented by many Canadian expats, two airline pilots walked in and grabbing the pub’s attention offered to buy everyone a round. Happy with the thought of a free drink, the pilots offer was met by applause. However, he didn’t actually mean ‘a round of drinks’, the offer was for free ‘round trip tickets’ to go to Canada for the Christmas holidays.
The whole event was of course captured on video (which you can see by clicking on the PRmoment link above). And the video even cleverly ends with one of the airline’s key messages: Every year Air Canada sends thousands of Canadians home for the holidays … This year we wanted to bring a few more.”
Working for a B2B PR agency, I love a goodwill PR story at Christmas. This story shows that a good will gesture coupled with some clever PR techniques will ensure it gets seen far and wide. Just the sort of heart warming tale we want to see at this time of year.
Fiona Whyatt has worked in B2B PR for many years. She loves blogging!
