#SouthwestSaysAloha

Southwest Airlines was launching its first-ever flights to Hawaii and needed awareness plus pre-sale ticket purchases for routes it had never flown, in airports where rivals already served the islands. Hawaii reads as an aspirational, distant trip, and rivals already flew there from the same Bay Area airports, so Southwest had to make its launch feel like an event. HireInfluence worked from the insight that mainland audiences book a winter getaway when they can picture the trip, and that Hawaii-based creators can show the islands more credibly than an airline can.

The answer was #SouthwestSaysAloha, a surprise influencer unveiling of the new routes and pre-sale. Six hand-selected mainland west coast influencers announced the routes and pre-sale availability to audiences they already held, then paired Hawaii-based creators took over those influencers' Instagram Stories to show things to see and do in the islands. The takeovers supplied the inspiration and the unveiling supplied the offer in the same feed, at the moment inspiration peaked.

Pairing destination-local creators with audience-holding mainland creators combined reach with credibility, and the real route launch gave creators something concrete to announce. The campaign ran on Instagram. HireInfluence reports 56M impressions, 3M engagements and a $0.03 cost per engagement. Every figure comes from the agency's own case page, which does not date the campaign, the influencer count is internally inconsistent, and pre-sale ticket impact was not disclosed, so the effect on the commercial goal cannot be independently assessed.