If you haven’t seen the WestJet Christmas Miracle YouTube video yet, you may have been living under a rock. No seriously. The video, which was published on December 8th, has been making the rounds on every social media platform and has over 31 million views.
If you haven’t seen the video, go watch it now, as it is a tearjerker. The idea behind the video was simple, but it took 175 WestJet employees to pull off. WestJet set up a video feed so passengers outside of boarding gates for two Nov. 21 flights from Calgary could tell Santa Claus what they wanted for Christmas.
While the flights were in the air, WestJet workers scrambled to buy everything the passengers had asked for. They ran to Best Buy and a nearby mall to buy cameras, phones, socks, underwear and even a big-screen TV. They bought Ken dolls for the women who had asked for husbands and toy cars for the people who had requested a new car. In all, they wrapped 357 gifts, labeled them and sent them down the baggage carousel to unsuspecting passengers. The result? A fun, heartwarming video that might even make Ebenezer Scrooge tear up a bit.
But the most astonishing part is how quickly the video went viral. WestJet had set a goal of reaching 200,000 views, which if met they would donate holiday flights to a charity. Due to online buzz, the video received 315,000 views withing the first 24 hours! When WestJet was asked about the video’s success, “Gobsmacked would be the best way to put it,” WestJet spokesman Robert Palmer said. “We are absolutely gobsmacked.”
The Christmas Miracle video, which was 5 1/2 minutes long, has gotten WestJet more publicity than it could have ever paid for with a traditional ad. If WestJet had aired that ad on a prime-time network in the U.S., it would have cost the company anywhere from $150,000 to $300,000, with an average prime-time audience of about 8.2 million. When comparing that number to the 31 million views the video has so far, this viral video is one of the major advertising successes of the holiday season.
Musings on Emerging Media 
Love, love this video and it is definitely a tear jerker! This video will go down as one of the most successful viral holiday videos if I had to guess. I personally had never heard of WestJet until I saw this video and I immediately had to look it up and gained respect for the brand, a brand that I potentially could never use because of my region. WestJet launched and executed this perfectly!