Jet2Holidays: When an advert's audio becomes a trend on TikTok
Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday
The Jet2 holiday trend on TikTok at the moment is one of the wildest moments in TikTok trend history.
An old TV ad’s audio has gone viral all over UK TikTok, with over 100M views and 36,000 posts.
The audio comes from the classic Jet2holiday ad (first launched in 2016) that features Jess Glyne’s ‘Hold My Hand’:
You know it, in fact most people in the UK who have watched any TV in the last 10 years know it, it’s a proper earworm of an ad.
So much so that Jess Glyne used to catch a lot of shit for it.
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I’m sure she doesn’t mind too much, knowing the going rate she’ll be pocketing for ongoing usage rights though.
An astonishing thing has happened over the last few months though: the audio from the ad has been featured in loads of viral videos until it’s now become a trend in its own right.
100 million views and 36,000 posts to be exact.
But how did it happen?
Well it all started from an aviation account that posted it last year:
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And it was then used intermittently in various TikToks until it started to take off (excuse the pun) in mid-March:
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As we got into April, you started to see more and more parodies start to pop off, in particular Alex Walton's which did big numbers.
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It then started splitting into a mix of people miming the advert itself…
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People having moments on holiday…
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But then also very randomly, speeding cars travelling along a highway? (Jet2 smartly having got involved in these ones).
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The lifecycle of a trend is confusing and always a little bit different, but Jet2 managed to push this further by interacting and resharing the best ones:
Side note, has anyone noticed the Post Office seem to be in the comments of almost every viral video at the moment?
There’s got to be a funny delivery joke in there somewhere.
So the trend then entered the phase of critical mass where people were just using the audio for everyday moments and referencing Jet2 consistently.
I mean how wild is it that you have people posting TikTok’s that have audio saying ‘nothing beats a Jet2 holiday’.
Can you imagine the marketing head office of Jet2 watching this come through? It’s the stuff of every marketers dream, when you become the trend… but in a positive way.
It reminds me a lot of what happened with TK Maxx last year when everyone went into TK Maxx and created content about the super ridiculous and specific things that you find in TK Maxx.
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It was huge on TikTok for weeks, but the key difference here is that TK Maxx did absolutely nothing with it.
I covered this last year at the time on my TikTok about brands:
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I found it baffling that TK Maxx just left all that engagement on the table, not interacting with any of them, nor reposting any (see their reposts here).
And of course… not doing their own self-deprecating version of it either. They could have owned the trend and mopped up the views and engagement, but they left it all on the table.
So a big shout out to the social media team at Jet2 for understanding the assignment with their response:
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They leaned into the trend, mimicking the better parodies and using their own sound (to try and get some ownership).
They’re then pushing UGC further with a Jet2holidays voucher giveaway, all based around trying to get people to use their own sound:
It’s pretty genius really as it’s infinitely better having people use your sound rather than A7-BBH Man's (and presumably this audio is the correct signed-off version they currently have the rights to).
This is exactly what brands should do if they’ve become a trend, lean into the joke and push the content further where they can.
In many ways this is the opposite of what happened with the TK Maxx trend last year where the brand itself never lent into it at all and almost felt ashamed of what was happening.
It also makes me wonder, if branded ad audio can become trends like this on TikTok, what other British ads could we see break into 2025 meme culture…
Enter Barry Scott of Cillit Bang fame:
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Barry Scott has already started making some ripples with a few music remixes, with this one on half a million views and Barry Scott content starting to make the rounds across TikTok.
Perhaps Cillit Bang need to get ready to ride their own branded audio TikTok trend wave….
In the meantime they could do a lot worse than giving Jet2’s social media team a shout on what to do, as they’ve nailed what brands should do when they become a trend on TikTok.