It’s a rare passenger who’s happy when they see a baby brought onto a plane. It’s not only the “winner” who gets to sit next to the little ones for hours on end, but anyone within earshot when the baby starts to cry. In fact, the dread is so commonly felt that a meme was even made about it.
And yet, way back in 2016, JetBlue managed to figure out a way to make most passengers on the plane not only tolerate a crying baby on their flight, but even, maybe just a little bit, like it.
An ad was released a couple of weeks before Mother’s Day that year: they offered 25% off of passengers’ next JetBlue flights every time a baby cried on the plane. And if 4 babies cried during the flight, yep, the passengers would get a free flight on JetBlue.
Genius.
The super smart campaign, called “FlyBabies,” was developed by ad agency MullenLowe.
How the Campaign Worked
After passengers were seated, a flight attendant announced, “This will be the very first flight where crying babies is a good thing. Every time a baby on this plane cries, you will receive 25 percent off your next JetBlue flight. In other words, four cries is equivalent to a free round-trip ticket.” Fortune noted that passengers were “cheering and clapping” for crying babies by the time the plane touched down. “It made the entire idea of being mad about a sweet, innocent baby crying seem altogether silly,” Popsugar reported.
A One-Time Stunt
The program was only offered once, on a flight from JFK to Long Beach. Here’s more about it, as covered by Good Morning America:
Again, total genius. And, unfortunately (and, let’s face it, not surprisingly?) JetBlue never ran that particular campaign again.
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