JetBlue WHERE’S WALLY JETTING

An eight-week sweepstakes where Wally toured every JetBlue nonstop out of Boston, dropping clues. One shoot day produced all of it.

We hid the Red Sox mascot in 32 cities and let Boston guess.

THE CHALLENGE

JetBlue had 32 nonstop destinations out of Boston and a Red Sox partnership. The brief was out-of-home. A route map is the dullest thing an airline makes, and the off-season is when a mascot has nothing to do

Turned the route map into a game. Wally spent the off-season visiting every JetBlue nonstop from Boston, and nobody was told where he was. Eight weeks, weekly clues, and two roundtrip flights to wherever he'd been that week. The destination list stopped being information and became the answer sheet. Shot 32 destinations in one day. Wally never left Boston. I ran the photoshoot, capturing him in every pose the campaign needed, then composited him into all 32 cities myself. Surfing in Puerto Rico, snowboarding in Denver, reading the Metro on a beach, hiding behind a poster. My comps were the master files that went to the retouching studio to finish. Thirty-two destinations, each one specific enough to be guessable, built from a single day on set. Wrote hide-and-seek into every format. The idea had to work on a poster, in a banner, and on a newspaper wrap, so each execution hid him differently. Wild postings where an observant Bostonian spots him on a beach. A JetBlue poster peeled back at the corner with Wally behind it. Life-size cutouts clipped to poles around the city. A poster built to protrude three-dimensionally so he looks like he's standing against the wall. Grew the brief rather than answering it. We came back with a sweepstakes, a weekly travel journal on the Red Sox page, a Wally Twitter account dropping clues, a Facebook fan page, and two browser games including a whack-a-mole with a leaderboard. Nobody asked for any of it. The idea needed somewhere for people to play. Made things people would keep. A full-page newspaper ad printed as an actual-size pennant with a dotted cut line, so the ad became a souvenir. Wally baseball cards with quirky stats. A Metro wrap where Wally reads that day's actual Metro cover.

WHERE I CAME IN

FULL PAGE NEWSPAPER PRINT ADS. A PENNANT YOU COULD CUT OUT, AND A ROUTE MAP REBUILT AS A SCRAPBOOK.

OUTSIDE WRAP

INSIDE OF THE WRAP

Metro wrap takeover.

Every print execution was playful and built to be handled, not just looked at. Here Wally reads that day's actual cover.

ROLE

Concept, Art Direction, Design 
CLIENT: JetBlue 
AGENCY: JWT 
SCOPE: OOH, print, ambient, digital, social, collectibles

IMPACT

  • Highest participation numbers MLB.com had recorded for a contest

The campaign was built OOH-first.

Every asset was designed to work in Boston and in the 32 destination cities it pointed to, across billboards, wild postings, print, digital and social.

We made special edition Baseball cards.

Wally baseball cards, handed out around Boston. Real card stock, quirky stats on the back, and a line driving to the sweepstakes. Red Sox swag people would actually keep.