Hotels.com tasked us to create content that laddered up to their Find Your Perfect Somewhere campaign and Show that Hotels.com offers properties and features tailor made for you.
Hotels.com approached Paramount looking for an integrated campaign that reached their target audience of adults 25-44. Specifically, they wanted to reach ‘destination seekers’ - curious and ambitious, with the means to travel. Destination seekers also aspire to make the most of every travel opportunity, irrespective of time, financial or other constraints.
Campaign goals included increasing awareness and driving favorability by connecting with ‘destination seekers’/adults 25-44. In addition, Hotels.com wanted to shift away from their Captain Obvious creative and stop being seen as a directory of hotels. Instead, their goal was to be viewed as a more premium brand that focuses on matching travelers with their unique preferences under the guise “there is no one best, there’s only the best for you.” Lastly, a partnership goal was to infuse their brand personality into the creative. They wanted the custom content to feel organic and authentic.
As a solution, Paramount Brand Studio leveraged fan favorite late-night IP The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and jumped at the opportunity to tell a story that felt native to a show field piece; informative, relevant, and funny… without feeling like a commercial.
Since Hotels.com claimed to work as a hotel matchmaker, helping travelers find their perfect somewhere—we brought in correspondent Desi Lydic to fact check those claims. To prove that the perfect hotel room doesn't exist, Desi Lydic headed to a luxury hotel with a mission to find imperfections in even the most perfect-seeming room.
The custom creative launched in a premiere episode of The Daily Show on linear. Cutdowns and ancillary content were distributed as media and editorial content across the show’s social platforms.
The campaign launched across linear with a :60 hero video, 3 unique snap ads ran in The Daily Show’s Snapchat show that swiped up to the long form version, and the full piece was distributed as editorial content across The Daily Show’s YT and FB. The campaign’s impression goal was surpassed by 28.1% delivering 8.97M total impressions over our target 7M. YouTube delivered 25.86% view + click engagement rate (benchmark 10.60% - 17.67%). Facebook delivered 25.21% view + click engagement rate (bt benchmark 12% -20%). Twitter yielded 35% over our benchmark and 71%. Snapchat totaled 12% more views than our average.
Fan sentiment/feedback on social was also overwhelmingly positive:
