Pitch Perfect with W+K and Booking.com

Last week saw the launch of Booking.com's first ever commerical campaign in the UK. Called Booking.Epic [above], the spot is a very funny and very clever take on travel and accomodation site advertising.

The company has only been advertising above the line since the beginning of last year, when it launched its inaugural campaign - Booking.Yeah [below] - in the US, then Canada and Australia, following it up later in 2013 with a more targeted spot for those looking for haunted accomodation.

Below, shots talks to Paul Hennessy, Booking.com's chief marketing officer, and Mark Bernath, ECD at Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam, the agency which worked on all of the TV spots. They discuss their approach, their goals and why emotional connections are at the heart of the campaign.

Why did you decide to create an advertising campaign now?

Hennessy: Booking.com spent 15 years doing online marketing only, but in August of 2012 we embarked on the search for an agency that could handle both a worldwide business like Booking.com and one that we thought could help not only establish a brand - because we really didn’t have any kind of brand voice - but also establish an emotional connection with customers. 

And after an exhaustive search we actually found one right just up the canal in Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam. We awarded the account in October 2012, we had creative in place by the end of November and launched [in the US] in early January 2013, so it was kind of a rapid pace. And so from that, that was like, that was our initial foundation of the relationship and I think it’s just gotten better and better from there.

In September of 2013 we launched similar creative [to the January US campaign] with a different voiceover in Australia, just over two weeks ago we launched in Canada and then this week we launched in the United Kingdom.

What was attractive about Booking.com to Weiden and Kennedy?

Bernath: It’s always attractive to get it at the beginning of a relationship with a successful brand but they hadn’t done any traditional advertising [because] they built it largely on search. I think it all comes down to sort of chemistry between people and we had met a few times, had a couple of dinners - and that is the luck of being just down the street - and just got along well.

Tell us about the pitch and the idea you went in with.

Bernath: We didn’t have much time to pitch, I think we only had two and a half, three weeks and a couple of guys showed us an idea but it was built on the substitution of the word ‘booking’ for other expletives; one in particular. 

So it was something we couldn’t really tell them about until the actual meeting because we had a plan to present it in a certain way. And I think a lot of the work [for other brands] out in the market place was more price based or this utopian version of the island getaway, and we recognised that real people have all kinds of different types of vacations and real people face real tension because holiday time is so precious. 

So we just focused on that moment you sort of open the door and look at what you’ve opted into and that is where the tension release happens and that is where things get pretty booking great or not. The ‘delight of right’ is what we called it and it’s just a really simply idea but I think something that was really relatable to a lot of people.

And they really understood not only the idea but that we wanted to make the work have a relatable insight; you had to have normal people go like, ‘oh that is so my family’.  In fact a lot of the early scripts were based on our personal lives.

How important was the emotional connection for the customer?

Hennessy: Booking cares so much about the small stuff for every customer, we wanted to make that relatable and we think that is where you actually get the emotional connection, you know. When we embarked on this it was very important that the creative reflected the DNA of the organisation or it would have been rejected. By showing how much we care about the customer, whatever their quirks are, whatever their interests are and whatever we can do to leverage our vast accommodations, you know that would feel right. 

Your previous marketing was based around online search, why did you decide that it was a good idea to move into TV?

Hennessy: I think we found that online marketing alone only got us to some of the market and it was only getting us to the chunk of the market that is called 'bottom of the funnel'; people who know exactly where they want to go; they’ve typed in Paris hotels or London hotels or whatever and then want to book.

What we were missing was the inspiration side of travel, the dreamy stage of travel and quite frankly we thought we had this spectacular product [but] our awareness was low in many countries including the UK. 

And so it was a simple premise, let’s tell people about this great product and nothing works better than a 30- or 60-second spot to really explain who we are and what we are trying to accomplish, so that is why we’ve gone down the TVC route.

It’s hard to get emotion out of a billboard right, I mean I think there is a great place for that but we just think that this tells a story much better.

What was the brief you gave to W+K?

Hennessy: You know, while it was some ridiculous 25 page brief there were two or three major premises; one was it needs to be a big idea because [online travel] is one of the most crowded spaces in the advertising world; it’s super competitive with well-established brands so we needed a big idea.  And ultimately we needed it to an emotional connection to the customer and that was really the gist of it.

Obviously it had to be something that cut through and was creative and we searched the world, there was no requirement that the agency was located in Amsterdam in any way [but] I think W+K spoke to us uniquely and, you know, they ultimately won with the pitch idea and then we immediately went into script writing.

Bernath: Yeah, you know, the Amsterdam office is purpose built to do global work and even though this was a US launch we knew that they had an eye on expansion; global domination to put it more specifically [and] we always try to figure out why a company does what they do before we make any ads; people want to know that I think. 

Everybody knows that a company wants you to buy the thing they make because that is why they are advertising but on a deeper level I think it’s nice to have a sense of the human beings behind the operation. And you know, the way we relate to that is that this company does everything it can to make sure when I open that door that I’m going to get what I thought I was getting or even better, but certainly not less than that.

How pressured was the process of launching the campaign see as it was the first for Booking.com?

Hennessy: There was plenty of pressure from launching a brand that had been silent for, well, since inception, so 15 years. That this is going to be our first voice and getting that right in the most crowded market in the world, it just had its own pressure. 

Mark has said that trust was key and I think that has been the secret sauce because we have a trusting environment and that allows for collaboration and for good ideas to come from all team members, and it allows everyone to be critical of the work to make it better and then, since it’s about the work not about the people, that again reinforces the trust. 

Bernath: I think [Booking.com] walk into the room wanting us to succeed and that might sound like, well yeah of course, but again, there can be weird adversarial relationships sometimes, and clients who walk in wanting the agency to kick ass and succeed get that kind of work. 

And they get the motivation, even if we don’t succeed in that meeting, when you know [success] is the goal you head back quickly and get to work. 

How important was it that the campaign be creative?

Hennessy: Innovation is in our DNA and so to go out with something that is rational - we’ve got a lot of hotels and they’re a pretty good price, come buy from us - feels underwhelming.

We thought that innovation should come through and if you are coming last to market in a super-crowded market we thought that you needed to be best in class. So it’s that simple, we just need to be better than anything else out there, that is always our mission and so that is what drives the creativity. 

There are lots of great line in the spots – recreational sand etc – was it hard to pick the best ones?

Bernath: Yeah, we had the 'booking' substitution in the first campaign and then we wanted to hold up these seemingly small amenities that people care about in huge ways, depending on who you are. 

If there is an awesome array of soap that can change everything and if there is a hairdryer, it’s not just a hairdryer it’s 'electric wind', it’s not a sand trap it’s 'recreational sand'. 

We had a huge list of all kinds of different ones and we just went through them together and I think there was a lot of agreement then a couple of debates on certain ones and we’ve already been getting a lot of nice feedback from consumers who maybe want to search by ‘maximum plushocity’.

Hennessy:  Maybe customers aren’t always consciously thinking about [those things] but then when we hear it on our reviews the insights came.  And there were as many [lines] that didn’t make the commercial and that we didn’t even shoot. 

Bernath: And then I guess corporate travel is also a big part of the business and I think we all -  small companies, bigger companies - are subjected to those outings where we are supposed to bond and do things like trust-falls and what not.  

And they are often unbearable and none of us look forward to them, but when they come with an amazing place to stay then that can go a long way to making it bearable.

We’re just trying to mine these stories that people can relate to, where the accommodation can play a really key role and make or break the thing you are going to, whether it’s a first date or a company outing, you know, those kinds of things.