The Campaign

It’s difficult to stand out at Christmas. There’s one group of individuals that know this all too well – December Babies. Those people unlucky enough to be born in December who find their birthdays overshadowed by the holidays, the Christmas parties and the all-too-festive gift-giving. Jetstar celebrates their birthday in December too. They know just how December babies feel. Drawing on this shared bond and backed up with very passionate stories (*read rants) from December Babies we spoke to – we developed a content-rich campaign that resonated with our audience. To some it could seem a risky strategy. Was it too niche? Shouldn’t we talk about Christmas? But we knew we had found a brilliant insight and a shared bond, that would make our content intensely shareable. Content for December Babies, by a December Baby. Forget Christmas. This festive season, Jetstar wishes December Babies a very Happy Birthday!

Creative Execution

We launched the campaign with a mockumentary video featuring December Babies sharing sad Christmas tales. This launched a competition to get December Babies to share their own story with the hashtag #JetstarDecemberBaby to win the ultimate birthday present this Christmas. Over 260,000 views later, conversation was buzzing. Clearly December Babies had been waiting for someone to recognise their plight. We received 280 entries: pictures of Christmas-themed birthdays and hundreds of happy birthday wishes for Jetstar. All the entries were shared on entrants’ personal social channels, extending the positive sentiment to all their friends. We created a Christmas birthday song mash-up and surprised eleven winners with glittering birthday banners, a giant orange present filled with balloons and two Jetstar flights to be used anywhere, anytime. We captured the December Babies’ surprised reactions and used this footage as Jetstar’s festive campaign video (an entirely different take on your traditional Christmas film).

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

Over 1.3 million people watched the festive campaign videos. Over 1,400 people commented or shared the video – a 93% increase on the average rate of interactions for Jetstar on Facebook. The campaign gave Jetstar a loud voice in a cluttered, festive period. The campaign humanised the brand and ensured its customers and non-customers alike felt overwhelming brand love. Throughout December, Jetstar’s Facebook wall was filled with hundreds of “Happy Birthday Jetstar” messages from their entire fanbase. What originally started out as a brand-building exercise gained so much momentum that it led to a 42% increase in sales revenue compared to the same period last year. Turns out when consumers love your brand, you don’t have to engage in the same Christmas price wars as your competitors… So, how do you stand-out at Christmas? Don’t talk about Christmas at all. Merry birthday, everyone!

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

Corporate birthdays are a hard sell. Jetstar Asia wanted to celebrate its birthday in December and build brand love. But it’s difficult to stand out at Christmas. One group of people understand just how Jetstar feel – December Babies. We created a mockumentary featuring real December Babies and asked others to share their stories. Then we surprised Decemer Babies with the ultimate birthday present, capturing their reactions on film and racked up 1.3million views (just in time for Christmas). Sales revenue increased by 42% from the same period last year, making it Jetstar’s best birthday ever. Merry birthday!

Video was at its heart. Every piece of content we created had a strong call to action, inspiring under-appreciated December Babies to get involved (and their friends to share it with them). After all, everyone knows a December Baby in need of some birthday love. We launched the campaign in mid-November, beating the majority of festive campaign launches to the punch and ensuring we owned the conversation from the very beginning. With a rich content plan and multiple touchpoints laid out for the weeks until year-end, the campaign put social sharing at its heart. We cast real-life December Babies in our launch video, making our target audience the stars and giving them a platform to share what they believe December should really be about.