In Spirit’s latest, they offer:
Spirit wins, because they get the Wall Street Journal to cover their ‘low fares’ at virtually zero cost.
“Our bare fare was hacked,” reads a Spirit Airlines promotion emailed to consumers Wednesday, just days after hacked nude photographs of a handful of celebrities surfaced online. “We feel naked; you were never supposed to see this Bare Fare! It was meant for a special someone (who isn’t you). Now it’s all over the Internet for you to take advantage of as you see fit.”
Spirit has promoted its Bare Fare program before, but the cheeky references to the weekends’ high-profile photo deluge are new. “We thought the cloud was our friend, y’know, because we spend so much time flying with ‘em,” the promotion says, referring to reports that hackers accessed the photos through Apple’s iCloud system. “But now our private prices are on display!”
This from the airline that believes having customers who think you’re bad is a good thing, and won’t invest in a frequent flyer program that can do more than get you magazine subscriptions free.
But it continues a long tradition on ‘tasteless takes’ on the news.
Back in November they passed the ‘Affordable Fare Act’ (because their website works!). Though Spirit does often have low fares, there are definitely no subsidies (or cross-subsidies), only ancillary fees…
When the Anthony Weiner sexting story first broke two years ago, Spirit ran an Anthony Weiner sale. And a More Bang for Your Buck sale on flights to Cartagena when secret service agents were revealed to have frequented prostitutes there.
In 2010 they invited customers to check out the (suntan) oil on the beaches that they fly to… during the BP oil spill. (At the time I was just thankful they hadn’t advertised ‘a flood of low fares to New Orleans’ after Hurricane Katrina.)
Their most famous ad has to be their “MILF Sale” (Many Islands, Low Fares)…
- You can join the 40,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s free. You can also follow me on Twitter for the latest deals. Don’t miss out!
I am OK with an airline having a sense of humor.
I like that they don’t issue knee jerk apologies the moment someone complains on twitter.
Offended by the promotion? Don’t buy a ticket.
People are flying 100k miles on AA so they can be upgraded to new “Doug Parker First” and enjoy the “light bites” – have you seen the pictures of those things – and you say Spirit flyers are the crazy ones?
Well, at least Spirit is pretty consistent in their ad “targets.”
And even they have some taste: like, after Ferguson, we didn’t see any ads proclaiming how Spirit’s low fares are causing riots.
Overall, I think most people would say their ads are fun. Too bad there’s absolutely nothing fun about actually FLYING Spirit.
I just booked two friends on Spirit on a flight to Vegas for 10,000 points + $5.60 tax + one bag for the two of them to share. Can’t get to Vegas for $70 bucks very often elsewhere these days! Given that 8000 of those miles were free, that’s a nice present.
And it worked again. You are covering it.
My favorite was Spirit’s Mullet sale – all Business in the front of the plane and all party in the back.