The crafty marketing team at Norwegian, a rapidly growing low fares airline, picked up on the recent news of Hollywood super couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s pending divorce. Norwegian hit the nail dead center on its head with the below newspaper ad and the messaging couldn’t be any more simplistic or brilliant: ‘Brad is single’ and underneath: An offer for discounted one-way flights to Los Angeles.
A photo of the ad is going viral and Norwegian may very well have pulled off the real-time marketing campaign of the year:
What does this mean?
Basically, Norwegian has scored themselves immeasurable amounts of almost-free marketing and incredible levels of social media engagement along with a massive boost to the coolness factor for their brand.
How?
By piggy-backing on a hot topic with incredible copy and by taking out a number of print ads and then simply leave it to the power of people’s willingness to share funny, relatable content. And just as expected – it is spreading like a California wildfire. Pun intended.
The news about the ‘Brad-ad’ is now also getting picked up by major news outlets and magazines like Time, Metro, Daily Mail and The Telegraph, which of course means even more free marketing for Norwegian.
But wait… there’s more!
The team at Norwegian didn’t stop at that. They also whipped up an online dating ad, which is now also going viral, where the message is: ‘Actor. LA. Recently single. Seeks likeminded partner with GSOH’ (GSOH is cool-kid lingo for Good Sense Of Humor):
Well played, Norwegian. Well played.