It’s often said that the journey matters more than the destination, but WestJet knows that the pic is perhaps most important of all.

The Calgary-based carrier’s latest April Fools’ play hinges on earned media and meme culture as Canadians begin planning for warm-weather vacations.

WestJet began seeding the “Vacation Flex” prank campaign through social-media, influencer and OOH channels on Monday. The campaign, a collaboration with Oliver on creative work and Media Experts handling media, prompts consumers to share travel photos with the company for the chance to see themselves synced onto the digital-billboard advertisements across the country.

The promise is of course too good to be true and participants are led to a WestJet landing page where they are nudged into booking a flight with a special offer. But the company hopes some gentle ribbing leads to consumer goodwill, as their April 1 work has done in the past.

David Giovando, executive creative director at Oliver, tells strategy that customers might not be able to brag that they were on a billboard, but they will be able to brag about their upcoming trip.

“There’s a lot of talk these days, and even research that we found, around how people like to actually share their vacation photos,” Giovando says. “And you know, it’s one thing to be on a trip yourself, but to be able to actually brag about it and boast about it, that’s sort of half the fun, right? So that was really the insight and catalyst for the whole idea.”

A pair of YouTube teaser and hero videos with lo-fi, public-access-TV production sensibilities set the tone for the campaign.

WestJet has a 13-year tradition of using April Fools’ Day to connect with consumers. Last year, for example, the airline promoted a headset that implants AI-generated vacation memories into the brains of those too busy to travel. And in 2019, it advertised the Flyre Festival, a fictitious model and influencer-filled EDM dance party on a WestJet Dreamliner that everyone was “pretty sure” would happen.

Giovando says the company’s analytics show that the April Fools’ campaigns score high in terms of positive sentiment while also fulfilling WestJet’s ultimate earned-media goal.

“For us, April Fools’ has always been this sort of hybrid between kind of a brand moment and something that also drives retail. So I think, for us, it ticks those two boxes,” Giovando says. “It’s this sort of a fun, engaging thing that cuts through and gets people’s attention.”

A customer-interactive model of promotion is nothing new for WestJet. The airline’s recent “Christmas Miracle” platform revamp, last November’s Grey Cup airport surprise TV spots and 2023’s “Holiday Heroes” all lean on real-world experiential activations in their execution.

“I think, because we’ve kind of built that equity in the campaigns, people are almost expecting something light hearted,” Giovando says. “And I think, this year as well, given the sort of the state of the world, people will hopefully welcome the opportunity to laugh,” Giovando says.