A guy who asked for socks and underwear in a memorable WestJet video last Christmas has a new, Carribean counterpart: The guy who wants a horse.
This year's instalment — the third in what WestJet calls the "blue Santa trilogy" — brings the airline's yuletide attention to a community in Dominican Republic called Nuevo Renacer. Airline staff have been visiting that community for several years, volunteering to build houses there, in partnership with Hamilton non-profit organization Live Different.
This time, a sleigh's plunked down in the sandy streets, and kids and adults alike are given a chance to talk to Santa — in Spanish, of course.
A couple of days later, the town arrives at a party on the beach, replete with falling snow. Requested presents are handed out, in plastic bins that can be reused to keep families' personal belongings dry.
And Santa arrives, one very special neighing present in tow.
WestJet's Richard Bartrem said building on last year's 36 million YouTube hits wasn't the point of releasing another video.
"The goal was not for this year to try and simply surpass last year's numbers," he said. "At that point that becomes the wrong target."
Instead, he said, the target was to tell a story about a community the airline feels connected to.
"These are communities and people who are asking for stuff that they need," he said.
One woman requested a blender so she can make local fruit into drinks she can sell to help support her family. Another woman asked Santa for a washing machine to cut down her manual labour and free her up for more family time. The whole community gets a present, too: A playground for kids. The closest one was a 20-minute drive away.
WestJet worked with Toronto-based Studio M on conceiving the story and turning it into the video. Studio M's Mike Mills acknowledged the terrain was a bit different than the previous videos, filmed in airports and baggage claims. The studio wanted to focus on the airline's real ties in the community, its "entrenched relationships," Mills said, rather than on some of the "traditional images of developing countries."
Both the airline and Studio M acknowledged the video may raise some questions for viewers. They released a behind-the-scenes "Why we did it" video and blog post accompanying the original story.
"We believe we're bringing awareness to some of those issues, rather than being exploitative," Bartrem said.
The flash-mob ways of the 2012 video couldn't be exactly followed this time, Mills said.
"We didn't want to just show up in the community unannounced. We were careful to plan this very carefully with the leaders of the community," he said.
The kids were a different story. They didn't know what was up.
"When they hit that button on the sleigh" to talk to Santa, Mills said, "that was still a moment of pure magic for the kids themselves."
Bartrem said he recognizes people can be skeptical of a big company trying to engender those feelings of magic.
"For all of these, it was important to us that that these are not ending with the message 'Book now,'" he said.
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