Spirit and Frontier Shareholder Vote Campaign
The Challenge
Spirit Airlines sought shareholder approval to merge with Frontier Airlines. They had a short period of time to communicate the value of the transaction with their institutional and retail shareholder base. During this process, JetBlue launched a tender offer to acquire Spirit. While it valued the company higher, Spirit executives were concerned about regulatory approval. Given all the noise around these competing offers, Spirit needed to clearly communicate its view shareholders.
Our Solution
FGS Global launched a dedicated microsite reinforcing the value of the Spirit and Frontier transaction, as well as a highly targeted advertising program focused on retail shareholders. The campaign focused on search, social, display and video advertising, reinforcing the value of the transaction for shareholders. Many of the ads were created in nearly real-time as third-party endorsements and/or offers changed. The campaign also featured full-page print ads in the NYT and Florida Sun Sentinel, the local paper where Spirit is based.
Results
In approximately one month, Spirit reached an estimated 125K – 150K shareholders on the NOBO list, generated ~22K clicks to votespiritfrontier.com and generated 6.9M impressions with their ads. In addition, CEO Ted’s quick-hit video message to shareholders reached ~29K individuals.
The campaign generated a significant volume of online conversations and was referenced by the media. JetBlue ultimately sweetened their offer to a significantly higher value than Frontier, so Spirit’s board terminated its merger agreement with Frontier and aims to move forward with JetBlue’s offer.
