Watch the baggage

Most people would never admit it, but they desperately wanted to watch the baggage. What baggage, you ask? The one you carried around during your last flight.

Back when flying was a thing, Delta decided to tap into customers’ inner desire for prohibited information. The company created the Fly Delta tracker feature, teamed up with Wieden+Kennedy and made a film that showed passengers what happened to the bags on the conveyor belt. 

Delta did this by rigging a suitcase with six cameras, which they sent from Atlanta to New York. The journey racked up over 5 million views on YouTube. It has since spawned a host of related baggage-tracking videos. More significantly, the app saw a 60% increase in downloads just one month after launch.

This is closely related to the hidden benefits concept, which I’ve written about in the past. Sometimes, the poingant benefit—the one most likely to resonate—is not the obvious one.