Hasta La Creative!

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.