Brave marketing from Spirit Airlines. The company is known for irreverent marketing campaigns but their latest offering is a coming under a lot of flak. In a new promotion, Spirit is using wordplay to show that at least one Florida beach contains oil - sun tan oil.
The company says the promotion seeks to address "the false perception that we have oil on our beaches," by encouraging customers to continuing to travel to Florida and other vacation hot spots.
Upon visiting the Spirit Airlines website, visitors are greeted by a large photo slide show that begins with "Check Out The Oil On Our Beaches." The slide show continues with images of glistening bikini-clad women relaxing in the sand, with descriptions of summer hotspots, including Cancun, San Juan, Atlantic City, and Ft. Lauderdale. The pitch ends with a bottle of "SPF $50 off."
Clicking through leads to an offer of $50 off a roundtrip airfare to selected destinations for a limited time. Apparently, not everyone is happy with the promotion, and Spirit says they wanted to provide clarification. "It is unfortunate that some have misunderstood our intention with today’s beach promotion," the company says. They also point out that "the only oil you’ll find when traveling to our beaches is sun tan oil."
Others think it's great for the state. Spirit says they received an email from a Gulf-side vacation home owner who "appreciate's the airlines efforts to stimulate travel to Florida."
In the spirit of marketing, it has achieved it's objective of course, people are sitting up and taking notice and many people who may never have heard of Spirit now have!
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