Riding the Consumer Wave
Discount travel website Hotwire.com, part of the Expedia family, had an unfamiliar US business model to launch into the UK. They had a clear value proposition, perfect for today’s savvy online travel booker, but wanted to acquire these consumers in significant volumes and at an aggressive cost per response.
We identified who their target customers were and established that they searched for and booked their short breaks online in clear peaks and flows throughout the day and week. We determined that we had to get close to this point of action; be there to follow this wave of online looking and booking activity.
TV offered the most powerful medium to build familiarity and get Hotwire, an unknown brand in the UK, on consumer’s shopping lists when they were looking for hotel deals online. And TV could create fame and give consumers trust and confidence to use Hotwire when purchasing.
The campaign saw huge uptake in response, where the response from branded search terms surpassed predications by more than 150%, as well as achieving 77% above the forecast volume, and reached the cost per response target, paving the way for further investment by Hotwire into UK TV.
The campaign for Hotwire.com recently won a Thinkbox TV planning award in May 2012 for ‘Best use of TV for response’.