Campaign Trail is an analysis of some of the best new creative efforts in the marketing industry. Past columns can be viewed in the archive here.
For decades, the phrase “do it yourself” has been adopted by a wide range of people, including home improvement, underground punk, and hacker-inspired maker culture, but in the era of YouTube tutorials and TikTok tips, It became even more popular.
Kayak is bucking that trend with its latest campaign, simply and straightforwardly titled “Don't Do It Yourself.” The three ads feature absurd scenarios that show the limits of DIY endeavors, from a man hand-fishing in a shopping mall fountain to a woman stuffing hay into her clothes and leaning against a post to pretend to be her own scarecrow. is focused on.
For the travel search engine and its creative agency Supernatural, this campaign serves as an opportunity to remind consumers that they don't have to use hundreds of individual travel sites when planning and booking their trips. . This value proposition remains at the heart of our service. marketing.
“Kayak is a little different from other clients in that the strategy never changes,” said Supernatural co-founder Paul Caiozzo. “We've moved our audiences, talked to different people, changed our style of comedy, and changed our insights with each new campaign, but our core strategy remains the same.”
The humor in this campaign is probably at its weirdest in its most disturbing parts. There, a man lies on his back on the floor, vacuuming popcorn and other items from his mouth and proclaiming, “There is no machine better than me.'' This conversation actually speaks to your campaign insights. Even though Kayak has been the market leader since its founding in 2004, consumers still search more than a dozen travel sites before booking.
“What people are doing is searching Kayak and then individually visiting all the sites that Kayak has already searched. We want people to stop trying to search on their own. I’m just trying to tell people,” Caiozzo said. There's no need for that. Computers are infallible. ”
Despite the extensive scenario in the campaign's advertising, the intent was not humor for humor's sake, but rather a way for consumers to look at themselves and their (possibly unnecessary) DIY obsession. was. But Supernatural and Kayak's relationship allows for creativity that embraces quirky humor and off-center tones that may not work well for every brand.
“We're not competing with them in terms of producing work that gets attention,” the executive said. “They come to the table with it and they know the process. They push us, we push ourselves, and by the time we get to that script he has 50, 60, 70 Run the script.”
AI is a tool, not magic
In addition to its creative know-how, Supernatural uses Merlyn, an artificial intelligence (AI) platform, to glean insights from its consumer data when formulating campaigns. “Don't Do It Yourself” used AI at nearly every stage to gather audience and category insights and generate images during the production process. The campaign included so many scripts that Supernatural built a storyboard machine that would generate fully fleshed out storyboards based on the scripts.
But despite how deeply AI is integrated into Supernatural's processes, Caiozzo believes the technology should be “completely invisible,” and the hype surrounding generative AI It discounts the innovative capabilities realized within.
“teeth [our use of AI] Are you going to change the world? Will that bring customers? No, I don't think so,” the executive said. “But it was amazing to be able to visualize the script and see what would happen without having to hire a storyboard artist. I don't think this means eliminating people in the process. It’s not magic, it’s just humans using different tools.”
Despite using state-of-the-art AI technology, the biggest driver behind the creation of the Don't Do It Yourself campaign was Kayak Advertising, from clients to agencies to editors to colorists to sound mixers. There is a team that has been working on this. Together for many years.
“This brings about as much creative change, if not more, than an explosion of new technology. That's definitely helping, too,” Caiozzo said. “Everyone is in a hurry to see how quickly AI can replace us all, but as much as I love this technology, I am a close-knit team that trusts each other and has a lot of experience together. We focus on that.”
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