Spirited Advertising—but is it Ethical?

If one wants a case study in successful buzz building, look no further than the marketing efforts of Spirit Airlines. The self-defined ultra low cost carrier took such a name by charging for everything from checked luggage to peanuts to soda—long before doing so was fashionable among the legacy and mainstream carriers.

Spirit also keeps advertising costs low by using edgy, controversial viral marketing techniques. Case in point: a couple of weeks ago AOL’s homepage news ticker trumpeted a story about Spirit’s “Check out the Oil on Our Beaches” ad campaign. A quick visit to Spirit’s homepage revealed a slideshow of bronze hued, bikini bearing models lying on the beach. A green and yellow bottle of BP (Best Protection) tanning oil accented the corner of the ad.

At a time when sensitivities are running high around the Gulf, such an ad campaign brought sure and swift outrage. It also went viral, attracting attention from the likes of AdAge Magazine, the aforementioned AOL front page spot, and plenty of other media outlets. Spirit pulled the ads and put out a June 22 press release stating:

“It is unfortunate that some have misunderstood our intention with today’s beach promotion. We are merely addressing the false perception that we have oil on our beaches, and we are encouraging customers to support Florida and our other beach destinations by continuing to travel to these vacation hot spots.


We are excited to continue offering customers huge savings with specials like today’s offer promoting travel to our many beach destinations. The only oil you’ll find when traveling to our beaches is sun tan oil.”

The PR department did a good job spinning that one. But okay, so how about my take on it? I think it was kind of a clever idea. The only bones to pick I had with it are the sleazy “cheesecake” photos. I prefer classy creativity to “sex sells” in advertising. But the spin doctoring put on the campaign—encouraging tourism in hard-hit Gulf Coast beaches—isn’t totally a bad idea.  The attention grabber definilty served its purpose. 

However, Spirit has a history of using controversial advertising. An AOL Finance blog references numerous other instances.  Creative it may be, but disgusting, tasteless, and family-unfriendly it is as well. As an airline that caters to resort destinations, Spirit should really consider cleaning up its advertising and leveraging viral/new media techniques in a more tasteful manner.

Spirit’s unorthodox marketing communications have definitely achieved their desired result: viral exposure. The question is, is it ethical? I think we know the answer to that one. And besides, Spirit’s not the airline to have won a recent Effie Award for creative (and tasteful) marketing communications…

Frontier Airlines' "Spokesanimals" took a gold Effie last month for creativity & effectiveness. In this photo Trixie the fox waves goodbye to the Las Vegas Strip.  McCarran Airport is visible in the top left while Steve Wynn's empire can be identified near bottom left by the Wynn Golf Club—a green oasis in the Mojave.