My wife showed me this from Facebook the other night. Feelgood? check. Marketing ploy? check. Fun to watch because as a US resident I can't buy a ticket from this company even if I wanted to? Check. I hope for their sake that it went as viral in Canada as it did in the US.
This is the first I've seen of it, and I am flying Westjet shortly. It's gone viral somewhere as it has 14 million hits with Westjet donating flights to Ronald McDonald houses after 200k hits. For those who don't know Ronald McDonald homes are lodgings near children's hospitals for families of hospitalized kids. Anyway, it was not a hoax. Travellers flying from Hamilton and Toronto to Calgary were given their xmas wishes. Too bad that it's a one-off.
That's the issue I have with this. A part of me is insanely jealous that I wasn't on this flight, a part of me feels bad for the guy who only asked for socks and underwear, and another part of me feels a bit icky about the happyfeels I got out of an obvious consumerism based viral marketing campaign that was probably pitched and rehashed 1000 times in a corporate board room somewhere. But while watching it I mostly just tried to enjoy it. Because it is a feel good story, regardless of the bullshit lurking below the surface.