Expedia plays creative agency for Bermuda Tourism

Expedia, the online travel booking site, stepped into role of a creative ad agency to craft an unconventional ad campaign for Bermuda Tourism. The work, which launched late last week), talks to Millennials in their own language — short videos that look like they were shot with a smartphone.
 
The company’s advertising sales division, Expedia Media Solutions, developed the campaign’s strategy and creative based on Expedia’s customer expertise.
 
Forget the typical shots of glamorous people and in picture-perfect exotic settings. The anchor of the campaign is a trio of is short videos that you pick based on your mood. Each video offers scenes of a day in Bermuda that look like you are shooting the film yourself. You are playing with friends on a beach, for example, or riding a bike or walking on a sailboat. The young actors look more like average people than fashion models.
 
You can download the itinerary with information on each location shown and share the video with their friends on Facebook and Instagram.
 
Expedia understands that ‘travel is a very personal experience," said Angelique Miller, Expedia Media’s director of creative partnerships. "We are helping Bermuda Tourism give consumers a way to really connect with the destination and have the experiences [on the video] for themselves."
 
The idea for the video ads came from Expedia's research on how to best to communicate with younger travelers. "We use our deep expertise with travel consumers to build campaigns for brands like Bermuda Tourism, which seek to engage with Expedia’s audience of more than 78 million monthly users worldwide," Miller said. "We collaborate with these partners to enable them to leverage the media value of our network."
 
To execute the campaign, Expedia Media turned to Archer’s Mark to film the day-in-the life videos using specially designed wearable cameras and with UK-based digital agency, Big DB to produce the work.
 
The Bermuda videos follows a similar first-person video program that Expedia launched with Visit Denmark back in June, which also includes a Twitter contest.
 
In both cases the videos are supported by online landing pages that run on Expedia in the countries where most visitors to that country originate. Visit Denmark’s landing pages, which focus on Copenhagen, are running in Germany, Italy and UK. The Bermuda landing pages appear on Expedia in the U.S., Canada and the UK as well as on Travelocity, an Expedia property.
 
Expedia Media designs such landing pages for various clients, depending on the advertiser’s goals, said Miller. "They can provide an immersive, impactful way to reach consumers."
 
Besides crafting campaigns for its advertising clients, or "partners," Expedia Media acts like a traditional publisher, working with ad agencies to tap into the Expedia audience with ads for travel, retail, finance, automotive and entertainment brands. The Expedia network of travel sites includes Hotels.com, Hotwire, Travelocity and CarRentals.com.