CASE STUDY

HOMEAWAY

HOMEAWAY

GOAL

HomeAway needed to increase their awareness.

ASSIGNMENT

We were tasked with creating a fully-integrat-

ed effort across multiple platforms. It had to be

launched in a highly competitive environment

during Super Bowl XLV, continue afterward, and

reach pre-established goals for increased brand

awareness and name recognition.

BACKGROUND

HomeAway brands are the global leader in the va-

cation rental marketplace with over 540,000 home-

owners listing their vacation homes for rent. Despite

their dominance in market share, they operate in a

category that is little understood, and has very low

brand awareness.

Complicating matters, when consumers go on va-

cation the automatic default is to choose a hotel.

This is how it has been for decades; vacation rentals

aren’t even part of the conversation. We needed to

get consumers to break with the automatic default

and put vacation rentals squarely into the consider-

ation set.

The good news is that the benefits of staying in a

home are clear and evident. Once leisure travelers

engage in considering a vacation rental, consider-

ation is automatic: added space, privacy, connec-

tion to the community, and more.

THE CHALLENGES

Hotels are the default choice, even when they are

not the better choice. No one understands the cat-

egory. No one knows the HomeAway brand.

Homeowners who list with HomeAway are positive

about the company, but they see them as just a list-

ing service.

We needed to move from a listing mentality to a

community mentality. In short, the key was to get

prospective travelers, current homeowners and pro-

spective homeowners more engaged in the brand.

THE IDEA

The previous year, HomeAway launched an effort

during the Super Bowl that used celebrities from

National Lampoon’s Vacation movie franchise. The

results were considered very successful.

Three months later HomeAway approached Ven-

dor Inc. to develop a second effort to launch dur-

ing the following Super Bowl. This time HomeAway

wanted to avoid the costs of borrowed interest and

celebrity talent. Great ideas are always more power-

ful than anything else, even when that anything else

happens to be Clark Griswold.

Our idea was simple. We wanted to put a name to

a movement that people already embraced, but

didn’t know it yet. While most of us love to travel,

few of us want to be seen as, or treated like, a “tour-

ist.” In fact, people react with great negativity to the

notion of being called, or even considered, a “tour-

ist.” Naturally, we invited people to go another way.

We invited them to step away from the well-worn

ruts of conventional travel and embrace being a

“Detourist.”

THE CAMPAIGN

HomeAway’s new work launched during the Super

Bowl XLV. The goal was to communicate why ho-

tels are bad, why HomeAway homes are good, and

to gain attention for a small brand with a relatively

small budget.

However, we couldn’t just jump in and tell the story

of HomeAway, we had to begin by explaining the

category itself. We were then tasked with creating

a sustained, integrated 360-degree campaign to

continue post Super Bowl. Our efforts were timed

to position HomeAway as a viable vacation option

at the beginning of spring, the heart of the family

vacation planning cycle.

To engage people in the brand beyond the Super

Bowl, Vendor Inc. worked with best-in-class part-

ners that are at the forefront of digital technology

on a global scale. The idea was to create a power-

ful customizable component to the campaign. The

result was an experience that was not only the most

innovative and customizable user-generated con-

tent initiative in the history of the Super Bowl, it was

the most innovative and customizable initiative ever.

The customization piece we developed allowed

consumers to insert their face, or the face of a friend

or enemy, into the Super Bowl ad, then share that ad

via email, Facebook and Twitter. Face uploads aren’t

new territory, but the customization experience we

designed for the homeowners was entirely ground-

breaking. We created a way for each of Home-

Away’s 540,000 customers to customize the Super

Bowl ad to not only feature their home, but to also

include an actual tour of their home. The custom-

ized tour could then be shared with potential rent-

ers or those who inquire about the property. In the

end, the digital effort made it possible for a Super

Bowl commercial that ran only once to mushroom

into a sales tool for each of HomeAway’s homeown-

ers worldwide.

The customization experience was supported

across paid digital media, social media, HomeAway.

com and direct response efforts targeting both lei-

sure travelers and homeowners. The campaign was

also sustained by a massive digital and social mar-

keting effort promoting the value proposition of Ho-

meAway and the category as a whole.

THE RESULTS

In a very short period of time the performance of

the Detourism campaign has shattered nearly all

client-established goals.

Among the traveler target, unaided brand

awareness is up 144% and aided brand awareness

is up 44%.

Among prospective customers (people who own

a second home, but do not list with HomeAway),

unaided brand awareness is up 277%.

The digital advertising performance also crushed

the metrics across the board and stands as the

most effective marketing effort ever undertaken

by HomeAway.

For the first time ever, conversion from banner

clicks to qualified inquiries reached double digit

numbers. Last year’s effort resulted in a cost per

qualified inquiry that was over $11. This year, the

cost per inquiry was $1.96.

The day of Super Bowl XLV, HomeAway’s commer-

cial tied for second in driving traffic to its website.

GoDaddy was #1 at 40%. HomeAway and the VW

Star Trek ad tied for #2 at 27%.

252% YOY increase in net traveler inquiries.

The total number of inquiries eclipsed the previous

four-month campaign in the first six weeks, and

is on track to exceed the established goal by over

50% by campaign’s completion.

100% YOY increase in inquiry conversion rate

(number of site visitors who inquired about

properties).

In the campaign’s first 72 hours it tripled the

web views of the Super Bowl commercial versus

the entire previous year (a celebrity driven spot

starring Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo).

Over 44,000 users developed customized Super

Bowl spots using our digital experience.

Most impressively, client models have determined

that the increase in inquiry conversion delivered

$75M in incremental revenue for HomeAway’s

homeowners in the campaign’s first 30 days. This

level of ROI is almost unheard of in any situation.

This is but a brief sampling of our work.

Please contact us to see and learn more.

Tom Hollerbach

tom.hollerbach@vendorinc.com

512.474.8363