Beating Goliath at 30,000 feet

When CUPE’s Air Canada component came to us about their flight attendants bargaining campaign, they understood the barriers. Flight attendants look glamorous and happy. How could we break through that image, build solidarity with the travelling public, and even mobilize support?

On top of that, Canadians are exhausted by rising costs, shrinking services, and an endless stream of crises—wars, disasters, tariffs, job threats. Attention is scarce, outrage is maxed out, and everyone’s tired of being squeezed. With everything going on in the world, how could we make them care about this issue happening to a subset of workers?

We also knew that the biggest challenge was still to come: A flight attendant strike means cancelled travel plans. We needed to build up empathy and solidarity, ahead of the public’s frustration about possible travel delays, and beat Air Canada at the narrative game.

Canadians were already fed up with Air Canada nickel-and-diming them at every turn. Our job was to turn that frustration into solidarity. Because when you learn that flight attendants aren’t paid unless the flight is in motion, you realize that customers aren’t the only ones getting the short end of the stick. Canada’s airline only cares about its own bottom line—not its customers and not its employees. Sorry, but how unCanadian.

The message had to be relatable, and unavoidable—and seen by the people who mattered most in this fight: frequent flyers, loyal Aeroplan members, Air Canada’s own employees, and the corporate-juggernauth employer. It had to be everywhere—on screens, in cities, in airports, and even mid-flight—until Canadians couldn’t look away.

We created UnfAir Canada: A parody airline to expose Air Canada’s hypocrisy. Message testing proved that we had a winner—a narrative that partnered customers and flight attendants together and pitted them against a greedy corporation.

From there the strategy was simple: ensure that every traveller saw the message at every step of their journey–literally. Air Canada flyers were saturated with the campaign through radio, out of home, video, and static ads. Transporting to the airport, in the terminal, at the gate, even on the planes themselves. Yes, you heard that right: We ran video ads against Air Canada on their very own airplane televisions. And it didn’t stop there. At destination cities like Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto, travellers were able to visit a pop-up installation demonstrating the “true luxury” that is UnfAir Canada.

When bargaining talks collapsed, the second phase of the campaign launched with a very specific purpose: To protect the union from a back to work order from the federal government… and they fell right into our trap. In the midst of a tariff war, patriotic sentiment was ripe to lean into. In a country that prides itself on decency, dignity, and doing right by one another, the idea that a national airline, which drapes itself in the flag, is profiting from unpaid labour undermines the very values it claims to represent. The Canadian government’s decision to side with this UnCanadian corporation–ordering flight attendants back to work within hours of CUPE’s Air Canada Component strike–was met with public outcry.