on 08 February 2010
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.”
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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.