Hotels.com ditches Captain Obvious in first work from Wieden+Kennedy

Captain Obvious has been sent packing. The mascot, who first appeared in marketing for Hotels.com in 2014, is absent in new work from Wieden+Kennedy Portland as the travel brand embarks on a new strategy. The “Find Your Perfect Somewhere” campaign, which begins airing this weekend, adopts a matchmaking approach, personifying each hotel as the best option for different types of travelers. Captain Obvious conveyed that Hotels.com was the “obvious” choice for hotels without ever getting into why, according to Hector Muelas, a former executive at Apple who joined Hotels.com parent Expedia Group as senior VP of global marketing and creative last year. “It never turned the corner,” he said. “We felt that, after sitting with the product team and looking at the evolution of the product and where it’s going to be in the next few years, [the Captain Obvious] platform didn’t do any more justice—we needed to press reset and do something more in tune with where we are going.” Watch: Captain Obvious' best ads Related: NFT company names Wieden+Kennedy agency of record Hotels.com first began working with Wieden this past fall after a brief stint with Tombras, which took over creative duties from long-time partner CPB last year. Wieden also recently worked on a pre-game Super Bowl spot for Vrbo, which is a sister brand to Hotels.com under the Expedia umbrella. The agency is a “lead agency partner” in Expedia’s marketing and creative organization, an Expedia spokeswoman said, noting that the company has no current work with Tombras. Hotels.com’s Tombras campaign continued to use Captain Obvious, the mascot CPB first developed for the hotel site eight years ago. Yet now, with the spotlight the pandemic has thrust upon the travel industry, along with the rise of alternative options such as Airbnb, Hotels.com is distinguishing itself in a different way. The brand will debut three spots to showcase its hotel types—one highlights a family hotel, one a boutique and one a business property. Muelas said the work will evolve to include more types of hotels and geographies over time. “It felt like a nice articulation of the creative platform—find your perfect somewhere and it comes from this idea that what’s good for you is not necessarily good for me,” he said. In the business travel spot, the hotel boasts that it expects “my bedsheets to be as crisp as my spreadsheets” as the video shows business suit-clad travelers taking meetings and working on laptops and devices. The commercial’s hotel ends with, “If you’re someone who likes earning rewards as much as earnings reports, I would be honored to be your perfect somewhere.” While leisure travel has made a robust comeback following a pandemic-induced dip, business travel has been slower to return. Earlier this week, the American Hotel & Lodging Association and Kalibri Labs forecasted that U.S. hotel business travel revenue in 2022 will be 23% below what it was before the pandemic. Marketing executives are beginning to travel for work again, but have said that they are being more thoughtful and purposeful about which events they attend. Gone are the days of attending all industry events, and this could continue to impact business travel revenue. Muelas said the company is seeing the trend of “bleisure,” a new term to signify the blending of business and leisure travel. The pandemic produced a workplace flexibility that now finds many travelers working remotely while on vacation, essentially creating a new category for travel marketers to promote. The new work will air on TV and digital channels, as well as out of home, social media such as Instagram and TikTok and radio. “This new creative platform has flexibility and longevity to be able to push across every platform rather than just make a film and put it on TV,” said Michele Rousseau, senior VP, global brand, who, like Muelas, joined Expedia Group last year from Apple. “It puts us in a position make a bit more of a splash.”

Hotels.com ditches Captain Obvious in first work from Wieden+Kennedy

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