Travelocity

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Travelocity

3150 Sabre Drive
Southlake, Texas 76092
USA
Telephone: (682) 605-1000
Fax: (817) 785-8004
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: www.travelocity.com

ROAMING GNOME CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW

The pioneering online travel-booking company known as Travelocity had enjoyed a leadership position since its launch in 1996, but it eventually lost significant market share to Expedia.com, its most aggressive competitor. Orbitz, third in market share, was also gaining ground. Travelocity was owned by Texas-based Sabre Holdings Corp., a world leader in travel commerce. To provide an emotional connection and to differentiate itself from competing online travel-booking services with similar user experiences, Travelocity launched a high-profile television, print, public relations, radio, and outdoor advertising campaign in January 2004. The campaign began with a clever premise: the "kidnapping" of a two-foot-tall gnome lawn statue who unwittingly traveled the world with his captors.

The $80 million multimedia campaign was conceived by Raleigh, North Carolina-based ad agency McKinney & Silver, an independent operating unit of worldwide communications group Havas. A three-week guerilla public relations campaign spearheaded the initiative with a poster reading, "Wanted: My garden gnome. Have you seen him?" These posters, which were distributed and posted around the United States in key media and consumer markets, featured the gnome's photo, a toll-free tip line, and the Web address www.whereismygnome.com. Corresponding print ads showed a two-foot-tall garden gnome with a ruddy complexion and pointy red cap and used the identical poster copy, purportedly written by the gnome's desperate owner, "Bill." Next the TV campaign broke on January 1, 2004, during the Rose Bowl.

Once the gnome's peripatetic premise was established, the roaming continued with vigor. In 2005 the campaign won a Gold EFFIE Award, which gave international recognition to ad campaigns for their measured marketing effectiveness. The gnome even had his own merchandise Web page on the Travelocity.com site, physical proof of the power of the campaign's effective branding to invigorate sales. Midway through the campaign an updated tagline, "You'll never roam alone," was added to showcase the new "Travelocity Guarantee" and "Customer Bill of Rights."

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Before the widespread use of the Internet by consumers, only travel professionals used computer systems to find itineraries and prices of travel offerings. In 1996 Sabre Holdings opened a new business called Travelocity, a website at which the consumer user could find on his own the same transportation, hotel, and related travel offerings. Competitors Expedia and Orbitz joined the fray, but all three websites functioned similarly, and consumer differentiation was nonexistent.

In the two years prior to the "Roaming Gnome" campaign Travelocity had struggled, losing its industry-leading status to rival Expedia, and it had faced increased competition from Orbitz, which was funded by airlines. Travelocity had never recorded a profit and found itself playing catch-up as competitors unveiled new features and vacation packages. The company thus beefed up its promotional efforts in mid-2002 with "Travelocity Can," a $40 million branding campaign consisting of TV, radio, print, and online advertising that highlighted travel possibilities available both through the website and by calling the phone number 888-Travelocity. The campaign presented Travelocity.com as a "travel dream factory" that served as the ultimate consumer resource for all travel needs. TV advertising consisted of two 30-second spots, which were supported by corresponding print and online ads. "Wedding," one of the TV spots, highlighted the resources available through the site by featuring travelers in places all over the world. The second spot, "Elephant," showed people experiencing things that they had never dreamed possible, such as renting an elephant, because of the help they had received via Travelocity.com's travel tools. David Hall, principal for the Richards Group, the agency that created the campaign, said, "we feature real-life people describing how Travelocity helped them plan their entire trip."

In 2003 Travelocity's revenue grew 16.5 percent to $394.5 million, although the company reported a $100 million operating loss. Of the 64 million travelers who planned trips online in 2004, 45 million booked on the Internet, which reflected an increase of 6 percent over 2003, according to the Travel Industry Association of Washington, D.C.

In October 2003 Travelocity hired the Raleigh-based firm McKinney & Silver to create new marketing ideas. The gnome idea was one of proposals the agency had made during its bid for the Travelocity ad contract. "We thought the gnome was really lovable, someone who has a sense of the fun of travel," Susan McLaughlin, vice president of marketing for Travelocity, told the News & Observer.

TARGET MARKET

Traditionally women were responsible for purchasing leisure travel in most U.S. households, said Henry Harteveldt, an analyst at Forrester Research, a market-research firm. Travelocity's research indicated that there was a subset of high-value online travel purchasers who appeared to be potentially more loyal to Travelocity than others. Further analysis showed an attitudinal profile of these people, which resulted in the identification of an opportunity segment that Travelocity marketing executives called "The Insiders." This group of 44 million people (33 percent of leisure travelers) loved to travel and was active, self-directed, resourceful, information-hungry, and Internet-savvy. The so-called "Insiders" loved to discover new things and liked to feel that they were "in the know." They also enjoyed passing their "Insider" knowledge on to others.

Additional markets the company identified included affluent, middle-aged, career-driven professionals; comfortable retirees (both couples and singles); young singles and newlyweds who worked hard and played hard; affluent, educated couples, with or without children, who led active cultural and recreational lives; and 40-something, middle-income families whose teen-dominated households kept them busy.

GNOME, COME HOME: HOW TRAVELOCITY'S MASCOT WAS BORN

In a 2004 Christian Science Monitor article, Susan McLaughlin, vice president of marketing and merchandising at Travelocity, was quoted as attributing the gnome inspiration to a curious custom in Europe, where gnomes that decorated lawns and gardens were stolen and then taken on trips by pranksters, who sent the gnome owners amusing "ransom" notes with photographs of their missing gnomes on vacation.

The custom gained worldwide appeal via the 2001 French film Amelie, in which the protagonist, in an effort to inspire her father to travel, conspired with a flight attendant to send her father's gnome on a photo-documented tour of foreign landmarks. Years before Amelie the long-running British soap opera Coronation Street featured a similar plot in which a man stole his neighbor's gnome and then taunted him with ransom letters.

According to David Emery, a writer and specialist in urban legends, gnome-napping was an international phenomenon with at least a 20-year history that started in Australia when a Sydney family's gnome disappeared. In France the Front de Libération des Nains de Jardin (Garden Gnome Liberation Front) had reportedly "liberated" more than 6,000 gnomes since 1997. Several French websites were devoted to this cause.

COMPETITION

Expedia, Travelocity, and Orbitz all ranked among the top 10 in sales, but traditional travel agencies American Express Travel and Minneapolis-based Carlson Wagonlit Travel still claimed the top two positions in 2005. Travelocity struggled with losing share to Expedia and facing increasing competition from Orbitz. In 2002 Expedia held a 36 percent market share, with Travelocity at 24 percent and Orbitz at 13 percent. Expedia spent $95 million on media in 2002, compared with $70 million for Orbitz and $59 million for Travelocity, according to TNS Media Intelligence/CMR.

In 2001 Expedia launched a television, print, and outdoor campaign, devised by the Los Angeles office of ad agency Deutsch, that used travel humor as its selling point. The TV spots showed unhappy but amusing travel scenarios played as flash-forward vignettes. The protagonist rethought and then rebooked his or her trip, precluding the potential ill-fated excursion. For example, in the spot "Business Trip," a woman reconfigured her trip in order to avoid an obnoxious male colleague who would have otherwise sat next to her throughout it. "House Party" showed a couple rethinking the wisdom of leaving their teenage son home during a vacation as they imagined a wild teen party. The couple then booked a trip to include the teen. "The campaign attempts to own better travel planning, which equals better travel experience," Eric Hirshberg, executive creative director at Deutsch, told USA Today. "These spots demonstrate the breadth and depth of Expedia's travel tools and how easy they are to use to plan and book your trip." Realistic casting added appeal to the target consumer, described as regular folk instead of "aspirational" travelers.

Competitor Orbitz aimed to put the romance and fun back into travel with its "Visit Planet Earth" print campaign, which was released in mid-2001, prior to the corresponding TV campaign. To inspire the kind of warmth and excitement that it asserted that consumers ought to feel in traveling, Orbitz's agency, New York-based TBWA\Chiat\Day, tapped the original artists behind the fun, mod travel posters of the 1960s and '70s.

MARKETING STRATEGY

"We did a lot of consumer research, and they told us all the websites look alike. They're all visually cluttered," said Jeff Glueck, Travelocity's chief marketing officer, in an interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Once McKinney & Silver signed on, it tackled the problem of how to explore new directions and regain Travelocity's market share in the online travel business. Glueck explained that the idea for the traveling gnome originated with agency group creative directors Philip Marchington and Lisa Shimotakahara. They had noticed a news story about a group calling itself the Gnome Liberation Front, which kidnapped garden gnomes in France and ran a website about it. "We thought, what a great spokesman for a travel brand," Glueck said.

"Tour Guide," a 30-second spot, showed the gnome, obviously enjoying his kidnapping, driving a double-decker bus through the streets of London. Speaking with a slight British accent, he narrated postcards meant for his owner Bill. They were snapshots of his adventures and showed him on a ski lift, in a spa, and almost fully submerged in a hot tub. The campaign tag-line, "Book with Travelocity. Don't Forget Your Hat," was meant to convey the idea that the brand took care of its customers' needs.

Travelocity strove to set itself apart from the competition by positioning the company as one that gave customers the best possible travel experiences, with a range of choices from the beginning of the booking process to the completion of the trip. Travelocity developed a strategy based on initially creating "pre-buzz" through grassroots efforts; once a real "buzz" had been created among consumers, the roaming gnome was connected to Travelocity as the website's new face. This strategy guided the tactics and the overall timing and implementation of the campaign.

To pique consumer and media interest prior to revealing the gnome's connection with Travelocity, the company and ad agency McKinney & Silver designed a "Missing Gnome" poster, describing the gnome's kidnapping from his fictional owner, Bill. The posters featured the gnome's photo, a toll-free tip line, and the Web address www.whereismygnome.com. Posters were distributed and posted around the country in key media and consumer markets. Additionally, more than 2,500 handwritten letters were mailed on Bill's behalf, soliciting help from reporters for the gnome's safe return. Efforts surrounding the gnome's pre-buzz included outreach to key travel industry analysts; to crime, lifestyle, and metro reporters at community, daily, and national newspapers; and to on-air personalities and news-assignment editors at radio and TV stations in the top 25 U.S. media markets.

OUTCOME

"We think this is the only time in history when the spending went up after the pitch," McKinney & Silver CEO Brad Brinegar said to the News & Observer, referring to the tendency of some clients to cut back their spending plans after awarding an account to an ad agency. Campaign results included successfully generating brand awareness. The effectiveness of the three-week teaser, which ran from December 2003 to January 2004, was demonstrated by the 1,554,000 hits received at the wheresmygnome.com website and by the 3,180 E-mails sent to Bill, the gnome's fictitious owner. Brand momentum led to increased visits to the Travelocity website, and after just one month of the new campaign, site hits were 250 percent over the original goal; through July 2004 hits were 108 percent over the goal. The campaign won a 2005 Gold EFFIE Award for campaign efficacy in the specialized Retail/E-tail category.