The debut HomeAway ad for the US Super Bowl last night has won the praise of a marketing monitoring firm.
The highly competitive marketplace which takes place annual during the ad breaks is a fertile breeding ground for the US marketing community to slam or gush over the respective 30-second spots from some of the biggest brands in the country.
Reprise Media says the HomeAway ad, featuring Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo in a return to their classic roles as the Mr and Mrs Griswold from the National Lampoon comedies, was a “Touchdown” compared to other ads on show.
HomeAway joined Google, Boost Mobile, E-Trade and Honda as the only companies to take advantage of a wider off and online media schedule.
Reprise says:
“TV connected with search, landing these advertisers in the end zone!”
A recent Comscore report suggested nearly one in three (around 30 million) people were expected to log on to their computers during the match extravaganza.
Around 14% of the Super Bowl audience was expected to visit one of the advertiser’s websites as well.
Reprise says advertisers not making the most of a mixed-media strategy included Budweiser, Intel and Dockers.
In a statement, HomeAway says:
“Daily unique visitors to vacation rental website up by more than 500 percent on day following debut of movie trailer-style commercial featuring Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo reprising their roles as Clark and Ellen Griswold; one million incremental page views for website immediately following airing of ad.”
The ad itself did nothing to explain what HomeAway is all about. They wasted their money on the Griswald’s. Much better would have been to contrast 2 families: One stuffed into one hotel room and the other happily ensconced in a lovely house for half the price and a hundred times the comfort and privacy.
If it matters, neither I or any of my friends who list their vacation rentals on HomeAway have received any inquiries since Sunday. Sunday is usually a big day!
Hmm Kristin, you might want to do a little more research on advertising and marketing. The ad you described would have sunk the HomeAway company during the Superbowl.
Judging the impact of a national marketing campaign by your friend’s listing results is also missing the point.
That spot put an unknown brand and unknown category on the map – if your friends had marketing understanding they’d appreciate the efforts of HomeAway’s marketing team.
It was also a funny spot which worked in its favor
We’ll know in 6 months whether HomeAway’s Super Bowl ad and integrated marketing campaign was a success. Presumably its website traffic is up, but will it be able to engage and keep these drive-by users as customers. That, of course, is what it’s all about.