A good laugh can go a long way. Which is why we were not so paitently anticipating some pretty glorious work when we learned that Saatchi & Saatchi London had teamed up with comedian Nick Offerman (Ron Swanson from the criminally underrated Parks & Recreation) for their new HomeAway campaign. Subtle humour is often seen as the low hanging fruit of advertising, but finding that delicate balance between the sly grin and the epic cringe is a trick that not every agency can pull of with as much effortless aplomb as Saatchi have managed here. “It’s Your Holiday, Why Share It?” is an integrated marketing campaign that launched this week in the UK, US, France and Germany, and sees HomeAway, the holiday home rental company, espousing the benefits of booking a holiday home where families and friends have the space and privacy to enjoy their whole holiday, without the interference of unfamiliar vacationers.
The campaign is built around a batch of 30 second and 10 second spots, which will be shown on ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky for several weeks. The underlying global integrated marketing campaign, meanwhile, will reach consumers using a spectrum of media, including digital, social, including YouTube, and TV. The creative will also be shown at the UEFA EURO 2016 football tournament as HomeAway is a national sponsor and the official fans accommodation service for the event. ZenithOptimedia handled the media planning and buying for the campaign.
HomeAway – It's Your Holiday Why Share It?
It all builds upon the brand's new strapline of “The whole house. The whole family. A whole holiday,” and is intended to show the many reasons why upgrading to a holiday rental home is a more enticing prospect than staying in a hotel or paying to sleep under the same roof as a complete stranger. Offerman's deadpan voice leads us through the modern culture of sharing, but offers the sad truth that whilst sharing can be a good thing, sharing our holidays is another matter entirely. What follows is a rather garish, gruesome collection of nightmare holiday scenarios featuring overly affectionate, hirsute strangers, terrifying stalkers and one particularly disgusting scene starring a hairy bar of soap. Yuck.
The campaign is intended to show the many reasons why upgrading to a holiday rental home is a more enticing prospect than staying in a hotel
Mariano Dima, Chief Marketing Officer at HomeAway, said: “Why Share It is HomeAway’s largest marketing effort to date, costing tens of millions of dollars. Our new campaign demonstrates the problem of over-sharing, using humour to show how a whole house is an upgrade from status quo accommodations and sharing economy alternatives Holidays are precious, so every moment should be about sharing the right things with the right people to ensure a more holistic, private and memorable holiday. We want to show travellers what a 'whole' Holiday does and does not look like.” Kate Stanners, Saatchi & Saatchi Chief Creative Office, added: “This campaign questions something fundamental about behaviours: that it’s ok to share your precious holidays with people you’ve never met before. At a HomeAway holiday rental, you don’t have to do that, and we wanted to showcase that benefit in a light-hearted and humorous way.”
