It's a joke knocking about the walls of TikTok because it's a joke ringing out on and even drifting over the crowds at music festivals: "Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday! "What was once a pretty typical British package holiday TV commercial has, during the summer of 2024, turned into a full-blown internet meme, mocked, remixed, and commonly understood from Esex to Edinburgh. The Jet2 meme has risen above a fleeting internet rage. It's a cultural turning point, shining light on the offbeat British attitude towards holidaymaking, advertising, shared humour, and, naturally, the dogged determination of marketers in the face of holiday actuality. It's evidence, should any be required, that in 2024, nothing, not even a sincere, sunshine-filled advert, can evade the internet's penchant for irony.
The Origins: An Advert Like Any Other
Jet2, the northern airline, has made its name on no-frills holidays to the sun. Every year since 2014, British TV viewers have been\ greeted with holiday commercials of families cutting through clouds on red jets, arriving at sun-kissed resorts, and met by beaming holiday reps who look as if they have never lost a piece of luggage in their careers. A calm and gentle voice this year, provided by actress Zoe Lister, reads, "Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday," smoothly over the upbeat sounds of Jess Glynne's Hold Hold. It was hailed in marketing circles as a trusty annual ad, reassuringly repetitive, visually striking, and underpinned by a logo that instantly resonated. For ten years, the advert did its job: reminding British families that for a dependable break, Jet2 was the airline to fly with. But placed in the hands of Generation Z users, immersed in irony, educated on TikTok, and wielding cameras, this year's campaign went rogue.
Memes, by definition, are concepts or bits of culture that are transmitted from individual to individual, changing, mutating, and acquiring shared meaning in a group. The Jet2 advert didn't merely create a meme; it was a playground for British humour.. It started incongruously: holidaymakers filmed very un-Jet2-like travel catastrophes, drizzly beaches, deluges of rain, and wasp mishaps with sun loungers, all flashing a cheerful grin as the now-infamous music played, "Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday!" The contrast was comedic gold. The earnest, breezy tone of the Jet2 announcer, combined with the bubbly Jess Glynne soundtrack, then suddenly became the ideal antidote for every catastrophe, great or small. The meme spread. TikTok users overlaid the ad's soundtrack on footage of airport lines spilling out of terminals, out-of-focus holiday photos with unidentified meals, couples arguing about misplaced passports, and even mundane mistakes: rain ruining a barbecue, a poorly applied fake tan, or a seagull stealing chips on Brighton Pier. Each then cuts to the money line: "Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday!" The brilliance was in the flexibility. It is only by acknowledging the quintessentially British tradition of self-deprecating humour that one can comprehend how it caught on.
Before long, the Jet2 ad wasn't merely a Twitter string or a TikTok phenomenon; it was a living, breathing reality. At a Jess Glynne gig in early July, part of the audience started chanting, "Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday!", half seriously, half in good cheer. The videos of the crowd went viral. Even Jess herself couldn't help laughing, jokingly recognising the ad's hold on the national consciousness. The voiceover for the advert, Zoe Lister, turned overnight celebrity after she started joining in with the online banter, reposting her most loved memes and confessing to The Times, "It's gone utterly mad. Honestly, the videos get better and better each day. It's as though the worse the festive holiday, the better the joke!
Why Did This Meme Go Viral?
Meme culture tends to flourish by breaking expectations. Here, the genuine optimism of the Jet2 voiceover is starkly contrasted with the hard and gritty reality of British vacations. The meme plays on that disparity, turning the familiar into the unfamiliar and therefore humorous once more. One aspect of its popularity is the ubiquity of disappointment. Everyone who's ever taken a holiday is aware that things never work out precisely as planned. The British are masterful at humour in disaster, and the Jet2 meme is only the latest. Timing was everything. By summer 2024, British TikTok had already soaked up nostalgia for pre-2010 pop, Jess Glynne's voice an instant throwback. The ad's ubiquity and the fact that it has been airing, essentially unchanged, for ten years made its sincerity ripe for mocking and strangely reassuring. Few things resonate with UK Millennials and Gen Z so well as poor weather, expensive drinks, and the mutual frustration of failing to get any mobile signal at a crowded airport. The top meme employs exactly these: the grimmiest Benidorm pint, empty hotel bar, or slog up a rain-lashed Welsh hillside, but always punctuated by the triumphant "Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday!"
But beyond the memes of viral marketing. For many, it has become a window into the British condition: the British holidaymaker's resilience, the friendships formed on postponed trains and baking airport tarmacs, and a reminder that no high-gloss ad ever quite captures the real thing. Even when you're queuing for the coffee machine at work, the holiday lives on." For the time being, at least, the Jet2 meme doesn't appear to be going away. As summer continues, Instagram and TikTok are still filled with new versions. The term has come to be used for hen dos, stag weekends, and even GCSE results. One thing is certain, though: as long as holidays are unpredictable and as long as advertisements are sincere, the disconnect between hope and reality will be there for the net to fill with memes. And, no doubt, to the dulcet tones of Zoe Lister and the unmistakable chorus of Jess Glynne. So the next time your luggage explodes off the airport carousel, your balcony at your hotel overlooks a brick building, or the sky rains buckets on your sole beach day, just grin, spin the lens, and recall: "Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday." Because if you can't have the ideal vacation, you can at least be included in the ideal joke.