Get away from it all
Issue 11 | July 2009
Agency
Proximity BBDO, Paris
Creative Team
Creative Director: Bruno Moreira Copywriter: Delphine Benveniste Art Director: Stephane Sitter
Date
December 2008
Background
The problem with selling holidays is that every travel company is trying to get noticed in December and January, when people are making their plans for the summer ahead.
Maeva wanted to generate traffic to their website and enquiries about short breaks to their call centre. They also wanted to create impact and raise the brand’s profile.
Idea
The agency took the idea of “escape and executed it almost literally. Anyone who has ever been to the movies knows that prisoners invariably bust out of jail by knotting together their sheets and making a rope they can climb down.
The mailing used similarly knotted pieces of white fabric. Often, the recipient would see only the knotted cloth dangling from their letter-box like a miniature escape-rope.
Results
The campaign is still running but, so far, enquiries are up 20%.
Our Thoughts
In such a competitive market as holidays, it’s not what you say that differentiates you but how you say it.
In Northern Europe, where every travel company talks to us in winter about escaping from the gloom, what Maeva did was to make me laugh out loud. And what more direct response is there to a piece than that, eh?
Humour equates to warmth and that’s not bad emotional territory for a holiday company to inhabit.