ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL

Travel booking sites are a commoditised and largely generic category, with little wiggle room to truly differentiate on product alone. This means that consumers ‘sleep-shop’ through the experience and tend to go to what they know. This was a problem for KAYAK, who landed on Aussie shores behind their key competitors, and as such were suffering from concerningly low and significantly underdeveloped awareness.

In the flights vertical, KAYAK’s total awareness was 7%, alarmingly low when compared with Flight Center (56%) and Webjet (52%). In the Hotels vertical, KAYAK lagged further behind on 4% total awareness (Trivago 61%, Booking.com 40%), and Cars on 4%, (Avis 38%, Budget 36%).

We were losing out to competitor sites that had already been investing in ATL campaigns, driving the brand salience required to develop behavioral bonds.

TURNING HEADS

Being in a highly commoditised and generic category also has its perks, however. This largely functional category leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to making travel feel human, emotional and personal. After all, travel is personal. Travel is emotional. Travel is human. So why isn’t the category?

We saw a huge opportunity to disrupt the ‘sleep shop’ behavior via a strong emotional and cultural play, and get our audience to turn their heads long enough to notice us, and break them out of the category defining inertia.

CAPTURING THE ATTENTION OF GEN Z

Safe to say, COVID really put a handbrake on this younger audience’s travel aspirations. It can be easy to overlook just what travel means at this age - it’s integral to identity development - travel offers a chance to find out who you are and how you belong in this world.

To connect with this younger cohort, we needed to break free of the sea of sameness defining this category, and reach them with an idea that shows that KAYAK understands that travel is anything but generic and functional.

CREATIVE IDEA: NOW YOU’RE TRAVELLING

The video launch came at an opportune time, with borders reopening and 70% of Aussies eager to travel post-pandemic.

To bring KAYAK’s attitude to life, there was no one better than Australian contemporary hip hop artist NARDEAN. Born into an Egyptian family and raised within a culture that did not support the notion of a woman becoming a musician, the rapper-singer-poet who did it her way was the perfect frontwoman for a brand that inspires travelers to do it their way too.

The film heroes and celebrates individuals who are writing their own unique travel narrative. It shows people that there is an alternative to pre-defined itineraries or following in someone else’s travel footsteps. And that when you travel your way, enabled by KAYAK’s tips and tools, you’re really experiencing the world – while inspiring others to do the same.

RESULTS

The video smashed all targets!

On YouTube, the video delivered best in class in all metrics within the Travel category in AU with the lowest cost per lifted user with 10M+ lifted users in Awareness.

On META - Action Intent lift for Social was significantly higher than the APAC region and industry average.

Digital campaigns (YT + Meta) reached a total of 10.3M+ users with $493k spend* across both YouTube and META.

KAYAK saw strong queries growth Yo3Y (+10%) surpassing pre-pandemic levels, and gained positive traffic share in Q4 2022 (+0.2%). Whereas all other competitors (Flight Centre, Skyscanner, Webjet) had a decline in traffic share besides I Want That Flight.