Return to site

Evidence of WestJet’s increased brand loyalty online - A case study

Brand Loyalty is the measure by which you retain your customers for a longer period of time. Given the competitive market, it is always in a fluid state and customer shift can happen almost instantly. To keep your brand loyalty co-efficient high you will need to regularly pamper your customers with some or the other thing so they stick to your brand. In the case of WestJet its marketing genius has helped it until now. WestJet as a brand is known for its out of the box thinking and creating innovative campaigns that last a while. Its brand loyalty online has seen a marked increase since the time it began a few years ago. The airline’s foray into the social media began in September 2009 when they hired their first social media employee. That was the year when the airline also struggled to attend to its customers because of the start of a new Sabre computer reservation system which held up the plight of many a passengers waiting to make their bookings. In that particular year people liked WestJet’s Facebook page more to condemn them for their services than anything else. Times since then the WestJet has come a long way to emerge as a social media savvy brand. In the year 2011 they started creating their own you tube videos to market themselves. This started a new era at WestJet and the advent of social media gave them the discretion to do their own thing without waiting for the newsmakers to print a story for them. They used their you tube video channel to bring alive their traditional April fool’s gags and released an April Fool’s video about child-free cabins on select flights which would enable a child to fly in cargo holds. The clip went viral and amassed well over 750,000 views, a figure which was considered to be huge at that point in time. Their unbeatable run surged ahead when to celebrate the 2013 Christmas they launched a new video aptly titled the ‘Christmas miracle’. This time around the social media campaign took to mammoth proportions and still continues to be watched across the world. The tally currently stands at a humongous 36 million views. So from 750,000 to 36 million views the WestJet brand has certainly come a long way and continues to grow.