Hasta La Creative!

The sleigh is overrated.

Santa Claus ditches it entirely in Expedia’s touching Christmas campaign from 180LA, choosing instead to fly coach around the world and ending up at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, where he delivers presents to some very special kids.

As seen in the video below, Santa traveled 19,602 miles over seven days (49.7 hours of flight time), going from the North Pole via Anchorage through Honolulu, Tokyo, Dubai, Paris, Dublin, New York City, and finally to Memphis, where he hands out gifts—and also donates all the points he earned on flights to St. Jude, which is the selling point here.

“Santa flies around the world every year for children, so we loved the connection of giving him travel points to donate to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital,” says Vic Walia, senior director of brand marketing at Expedia.

“More people travel during the holidays than any other time of year. We hope this campaign will encourage people to donate their Expedia+ rewards points to St. Jude, considering how quickly they can add up during this busy travel season.”

More at Expedia.com/Santa and the hashtag #SantaFliesCoach.

CREDITS
Client: Expedia
Spot: “Santa Flies Coach”
Senior Director, Brand Marketing: Vic Walia
Brand Marketing Manager: Jessica Eichner
Media Director: Elizabeth Dorrance

Agency: 180LA
Chief Creative Officer: William Gelner
Creative Directors: Dave Horton, Matthew Woodhams-Roberts
Art Director: Chelsea Cumings
Copywriter: Trey Tyler
Head of Production: Natasha Wellesley
Executive Producer: Erin Goodsell
Producer: Amber Schaefer
Head of Account Management: Chad Bettor
Account Director: Brooke Stites
Account Manager: Mackenzie Walen
Account Coordinator: Chase Pritchett

Production Company: Ghost Robot
Directors: Dave Horton, Nick Bentgen
Director of Photography: Nick Bentgen
Executive Producers: Mark DePace, Zach Mortensen

Editorial Company: Melvin
Editor: Dave Groseclose
Producer: Brian Scharwath

Company: Therapy Studios 
Executive Producer: Joe DiSanto, John Ramsay
Senior Producer: Allegra Bartlett
Flame Artist:  Wren Waters
Flame Assist: Geoff Stephenson
Sound
Recording Studio: Eleven Sound
Mixer: Ben Freer

Original Music by human

Expedia and 180LA have done a nice job lately of thinking more broadly about the concept of travel, going beyond physical journeys into emotional, even spiritual ones. (Among its more memorable ads was the 2012 spot about the father’s difficult journey to accepting his lesbian daughter.)

Now, the travel site is getting even more ambitious—and more social—as it travels back in time with a fun project around people’s Throwback Thursday photos.

Between now and the end of August, Expedia is asking Instagram and Twitter users to tag their #tbt photo with @Expedia and #ThrowMeBack. Each week the company will pick one lucky winner and give them a travel voucher so they can indulge their nostagia and return to the place where the photo was taken—and recreate it.

Or, says Expedia, you can travel somewhere different and make a new memory—which seems to suggest this campaign is less about actually recreating the old snapshots and more about just piggybacking on the #tbt trend in general. However, the brand is asking the winners to send in the recreated photos with the goal at the end of the campaign of telling a photo story with all the side-by-sides.

“We all have great memories of summer vacations,” says Dave Horton, creative director at 180LA. “So to promote the nostalgia of summer travel, we wanted to tap into the most nostalgic trend out there, #tbt.”

To promote the contest, Expedia has posted the video below, “Back to Ocean Beach,” showing one family’s journey from Washington State to their old beach spot in San Diego to recreate a cute photo from the ’80s.

Read more about the campaign at instagram.piqora.com/expediathrowmeback.

Don’t skip your trip to Paris. The love of your life is waiting there, says Expedia.

In this new ad from Expedia Mexico, the online travel agency tells a simple story about buying plane tickets and having a meaningful life, from the perspective of an old woman looking back on the roots and fruits of her international romance.

In the end, alas, regret prevails.

It’s something of a bold move for any brand, especially a tech-driven brand, to tackle themes of Parisian love, given Google’s masterpiece on the subject. But Expedia’s ad is pleasant enough, if in an ominous and convoluted sort of way.

Because nothing sells vacations like telling consumers they will die alone if they make the wrong choice.

brightcove.createExperiences();

Expedia's "Find Yours" campaign from 180LA, which has produced some pretty forward-thinking and powerful spots in the recent past, is now encouraging you to "Find Your Spontaneity" by entering to win one of the travel service's daily free trips. The ad for the app-based promotion is a bit of an odd hybrid, though, with the first part devoted to Expedia reps explaining their smartphone app to random passers-by and the rest of the spot focused on a supposedly random guy who agreed to hop on a flight to China that evening. Expedia was going for some of the magic Heineken found with its Departure Roulette stunt, but they tried a little too hard, and the resulting ad feels jarringly artificial. Between the beautifully crafted travel shots and the sheer luck of catching a willing guy with a suitcase walking through a park, everything here just feels more staged than empowering. ("How did he get a visa so fast?" wonders one skeptical YouTube commenter.) But hey, a few theatrics are allowable if it means not having to watch an entire ad about how to use a mobile app. 

Artie Goldstein é um norte-americano comum, que cria identificação imediata com outros homens como ele. Sua história começa olhando um velho álbum de fotos, lembrando do nascimento de sua filha Jill, a infância e juventude, cada uma de suas conquistas. Artie está se preparando para viajar para o casamento de Jill… com outra mulher. É assim que começa o filme da campanha Find Your Understanding – Expedia Find Yours, da Expedia.

A ideia é destacar as jornadas pessoais de pessoas comuns, quando elas viajam, enquanto a Expedia cuida de todo o resto. A descrição deste filme no YouTube define a viagem de Artie como algo que irá testar, desafiar e mudar este pai de formas inesperadas. É mais ou menos o que esse filme faz, também, com quem vê. Já foram mais de 2 milhões de visualizações e quilos de comentários, tanto positivos e negativos.

Há aqueles que pensem que a Expedia está dando um tiro no pé, mas há também aqueles que destacam a ótima sacada da campanha. Na verdade, só o tempo vai dizer quem tem razão mas, ao meu ver, todas as histórias de amor são válidas e dignas de respeito e até mesmo um bonito filme como este.

A criação é da 180LA.

Post originalmente publicado no Brainstorm #9
Twitter | Facebook | Contato | Anuncie