Hotels.com #NameThatWeekend

Challenge

Hotels.com sought a low-cost social campaign to increase brand opinion amongst Canadians during the high-stakes summer travel season.

The brand specifically wanted to be top of mind (what it’s all about in the online travel category) with its Emerging Traveller target, comprised of tech-savvy, research-intensive 25- to 34-year-olds who leaned into experience-driven brands.

This group was bombarded by messaging from booking sites at this time of year more than any other, so we needed to find an organic way to insert the brand into conversations about summer travel and demonstrate that the brand had a better-than-other-booking-sites understanding of Canadian travellers.

Inspiration

The team noticed that of the four summer long weekends (which were cherished, savoured and celebrated three-plus-day events in a country known for having six months of winter), only three had official names: Victoria Day Long Weekend, Canada Day Long Weekend, and Labour Day Long Weekend.

The August Long Weekend – the season’s forgotten “middle child” – had never been officially named. We saw this as an opportunity to inject Hotels.com into the Canadian social conversation.

Idea

We opted to run a Twitter contest inviting Canadians to name the only unnamed long weekend of the summer: the August Long Weekend. GIFs and videos starring the brand’s jester-esque spokesperson, Captain Obvious, launched our campaign with an invitation to Canadians to help name the unnamed weekend, followed by a poll that allowed them to vote on a shortlist of names.

Once selected, our winning name, the “Longust Weekend” was included in a petition to the Canadian Heritage Minister, advocating that it be declared as the official name.