This WestJet video has made me think quite a bit. It has exploded all over social media and news outlets, with headlines like "Must-Cry Video? Watch WestJet Airline's 'Christmas Miracle'" and "What WestJet airlines did for its passengers this Xmas - I teared up."
Because of my journalism background, I've been gritting my teeth at the recent tsunami of teaser headlines that use curiosity to entice clicks. I'm even more miffed that it works. All that to say, I usually skip over the wishy-washy teasers, but given the sustained ubiquity of this particular post, I eventually thought I should take a look.
Initially, I was pleasantly intrigued by WestJet's imagination and resourcefulness. For a moment I suspected this was something they'd done to bless passengers who'd had to travel on a Christmas-day flight, but it was a 2013 pre-Christmas event.
A boy gets an Android tablet, a family gets a 50" flat screen, and a woman cries over a digital camera she wanted. An adaptation of "The Night Before Christmas" poem closes with the lines, "A WestJetter would say, it was more than mere fun. Miracles do happen when we all work as one. ... Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good flight."
On NPR's blog Mark Memmot wrote, "Some Scrooges will say, 'Bah humbug, it's just a public relations stunt.'" but contended that "experts tell Global News that WestJet isn't likely to get a big boost in business from any good will it generates" since people tend to choose travel based on price, not brand.
Although I have my doubts it had nothing to do with raising publicity for the airline (WestJet said it would donate free flights to one family if their YouTube video got more than 200,000 views; it's now at 19 million), I'll give WestJet the benefit of that doubt and assume this wasn't a marketing stunt. Whether they make a return on their miracle is not my beef.
What concerns me is the growing presence of marketing in our lives. I don't mean merely our exposure to advertisements, although that's certainly at an all-time high. Through YouTube, Facebook, and other social media, we are being recruited as advertisers. Clicks and views are worth money, so if you're getting clicks and not cashing in on them, you're missing out, or so the reasoning goes. Conversely, if you're not getting clicks and you want to, there are thousands of ways you can sell yourself--your blog, your pictures, your "likes" on Facebook, and of course your YouTube views. Who dosn't want to make money from home without much effort? I've been told you can even purchase followers on Twitter.
Marketing has always been marketing. I'm not saying this is anything new. But I believe there's a line that's starting to blur--the line between marketing and our own personal lives and relationships. Do you feel the compulsive urge to share things online as soon as they occur? Do you get a little shot of dopamine when you check your status and see a lot more "likes" than you expected? Do you fantasize about coming up with a great idea for a video and watching it go viral? Maybe even landing a talk-show interview as a result?
I'm not as down on new technology as many are. Each era of history produces unique cultural artifacts and situations that may even be romanticized in years to come. It would be a shame to throw them out and miss out on what people in future generations will one day wish they could have experienced. The dawn of the Internet! Week-by-week discovery of the infinite possibilities as processing power skyrockets.
The thing is that cultural artifacts have their victims as well as their heroes. Sometimes they're even one and the same. I believe a big danger lies in quantifying the value of experiences, information, etc. based on their online notoriety, for one because competition of goods drives their price down, which makes the "sellers" more desperate and competitive. And then we end up with a kind of inflation of information--increasingly sensationalistic news that's got to be shorter, with more hooks, more EYE CATCHING! We need bold, italics, all caps, and lots of teasers.
If you've read this far, you're one of perhaps 5% who clicked on this blog.
As I logged in this morning to finish the post, I was ironically greeted by the following message:
The latest from Blogger Buzz
Earn money from your blog this holiday season
2 days ago by A Googler
The holiday season is here and retailers are spending more on online advertising to promote their products. Your blog has valuable space and you can earn some extra money by placing Google AdSense ads next to your content.
If you don’t already have AdSense set up on your blog, visit the Earnings tab of your Blogger dashboard to give it a try. It’s free and only takes a moment to sign up.
And if you’ve tried AdSense out in the past, head to your blog and give it a second look. It now has updated controls, so you can match the ads that appear to the style of your blog.
Happy holidays!
Posted by Ian Cohan-Shapiro, Marketing Manager
Three nights ago I dreamed I was in some rural community, but in the future. There was a big, dilapidated barn people were living in, and they were very poor and hungry. They weren't growing vegetables or tending livestock. They were brainstorming how to orchestrate something to film that would make enough money to get them by for another month or so. Perhaps someone would die in the film, perhaps there would be a terrible crash or explosion. They didn't have CG.
Forgive the sensationalism of that last paragraph. I wouldn't share it as an apocalyptic doom-and-gloom condemnation of technology. I only share it because it was a real, honest-to-goodness dream that shocked me. I don't think that's where we're headed. But I do think we should watch that blurry line between our lives and our ads.
That WestJet wanted to publicize their "miracle" is, perhaps, neither here nor there. Many millions of people enjoyed--and were deeply touched by--what they did. I found the closing words about "working as one" rather arbitrary and disjunctive, a generic placeholder for what I was expecting to be a very meaningful message. It may not have been marketing, but I'm not sure what it was actually intended to be. I'm encouraged that for every "miracle" that goes viral there are many secret ones. Sometimes that it is secret is the best part. It feels great to inspire others, but for me it usually feels even better when I've got a special secret, whether that be a scheme to bless someone or a gorgeous sunset through the snowy trees.
To NPR's credit, in November I heard one of their commentators remarking on the "Brown Thursday" phenomenon this year, in which retailers are trying to pre-empt the mainstream Black Friday sales to get a jump on the rampant consuming. "Sorry," the commentator said, "Thursday's already got a name, and it's called 'Thanksgiving.'"
~~~
Lately I've begun to enjoy the habit of leaving my smartphone at home in the evenings and instead donning an old pocketwatch I found at a Mexican flea market for a few pesos. It was broken, and it was quite a few years before I found a watchmaker capable and willing to make it work. Someone I respect once told me that we ought to intentionally cultivate a habit of fixing things that could just as easily be discarded, because it helps us remember that we're like that; we all need some fixing, and there is always hope.
I'm not trading my smartphone for a pocketwatch. Every generation has its reactionaries as well as its "actionaries." They key is balance, and knowing our own limits and weaknesses. Every time I compulsively reach into my pocket to take a picture or check my email, and find only the smooth contours of my pocket watch, I feel an almost involuntary victory over my weaknesses and insecurities.
Someday I'll bet people will carry around vintage iPhones and dress "turn of the century" (again). And rightly they should. But hopefully they'll be winning the battles of their own day, and their own technology.
