JetBlue Wants to Teach Passengers How to Be Less Rude

We love sharing nightmare stories of long hours stuck next to rude seat companions, but JetBlue has a plan to help relieve flyers of their horror stories.

Instead, with its new #FlightEtiquette campaign, JetBlue hopes to inspire passengers to be more considerate of each other.

As Chan Tran, Brand Analyst, JetBlue Airways explains, the schadenfreude thrill we feel when hating on fellow passengers inspired #FlightEtiquette.

“This series stemmed from the insight that the things that happen to you while you’re at the airport or inflight is always a fun conversation topic among those who are passionate about travel,” she says. “Travel brings together all types of diversity and with it, unexpected moments that can be humorous, heartwarming, and yes, sometimes frustrating. #FlightEtiquette is all about the situational behaviors that can occur between strangers during air travel. Every airline tries to glamorize flying, but not many provide a more realistic and truthful perspective of the air travel experience.”

This campaign was tailored to fit JetBlue’s young brand strategy with its light-hearted, humorous corporate attitude.

“At JetBlue, our brand approach, our voice, customer service, everything thing we do is authentic, relevant, relatable, engaging, unique, memorable and most importantly, human,” Chan Tran tells us. “Flight Etiquette is not only entertaining and humorous, it also says to our customers that we get you. We understand that on a plane, you're sometimes forced to rub elbows—literally—with people you don't know, and a little etiquette goes a long way. We’ve all been there.”

JetBlue hopes the #FlightEtiquette campaign will be inspire a dialogue with travelers on their common cabin companion complaints.

“First and foremost, we want our audience to get the humor of the videos,” she says.  “They’re over-the-top and exaggerated on purpose, and the actors we used are improv actors affiliated with New York’s Upright Citizens Brigade. We also want our viewers to feel that they can totally relate or say they’ve been in that situation before, and we hope to encourage engagement by having them tell us what they’d do in these awkward situations.”

JetBlue’s not trying to become the new ‘Miss Manners’ of the sky, though, much as the skies might need one.

“In our Flight Etiquette videos, we’re not telling people how to behave, but rather asking how they would react to these certain situations,” Chan Tran says.

More videos are coming soon to a JetBlue twitter feed or Facebook page near you. “We’ll have a second video publish this month and then look to publish more throughout 2015," she tells us. Campaigns like this are an essential element of the airlines’ brand engagement strategy. As Chan Tran says: “JetBlue will always continue to come up with more creative, engaging ways to spark relevant conversations with our customers,”