It’s a commercial even Robbie Robertson would sing the praises of. It opens with the familiar first several chords of The Band’s “The Weight”; a man walks over a cup of coffee to a woman still in bed; a Jack Russell lays on the carpet at the foot of it. The well-known hit song continues but it’s not Levon Helm singing; it’s a rendition by Canadian folk singer Abigail Lapell, which makes sense since The Band was from Toronto. The man snatches his car keys off the nightstand and the couple—dog in tow—head for the outdoors and try, in vain, to capture the perfect photo of their pup, who just won’t cooperate (it’s a Jack Russell, after all). A voice-over says: “Today, we accomplished nothing. I mean it—not a thing. And it was kinda everything… Life’s a trip. Make the most of it at Best Western.”
BWH Hotels’ newest marketing campaign is 30-second storytelling at its maximum: compact, authentic, thoughtful—a sort of quick slow burn that illustrates the varying degrees of travel and that even the most unremarkable of moments can be the best. Other spots are indication: a harried mother leads her family of five to the beach and ends the day back at a Best Western with her tired-out kids asleep at her side; in another, the same family is back on the beach, only now joined by the grandparents, and upon returning to the hotel, the grandparents go to one room, the family to another. The voice-over declares: “The key to a perfect family vacation? Separate rooms.”
Brand marketing campaigns are meant to elicit a feeling through messaging. In the case of BWH’s “Life’s a Trip” campaign, that responsibility fell to Joelle Park, SVP and chief marketing officer for BWH Hotels, where she leads global marketing, brand strategy and communications, including oversight of Best Western Rewards. Park, previously more than 12 years with Hilton, shares how the campaign, created in partnership with creative agency PMG, came about, how the messaging was chosen and how they landed on such an iconic song to pull it all together.
HOTELS: You guys nailed it with the music—a remixed version of “The Weight.” What was the genesis of the “Life’s a Trip” campaign?
Park: It’s music to my ears to hear the resonance of the campaign. That was exactly our intention. A brand starts with its purpose and at BWH it’s to inspire travel through unique experiences. Our customers want someone to help them enable their experience, so we are inspiring travel through unique experiences, and they’re looking for help in making that possible. We humbly acknowledge that we are not always the destination, but sometimes we’re the enabler on the way somewhere. We saw that we highly index with leisure trips and especially among families. We stepped back and said, ‘Okay, we know what our value proposition is. We see an opportunity to position the brand. Let’s look at the competitive landscape.’ And you know what: There is a lot of the same message in our industry; let’s do something different. The angle we chose was to emotionally connect and stand out and then introduce the rest of the portfolio. We partnered with PMG and music is an impactful way to emotionally connect. So, we paired some rich consumer insights to a song that is a fresh take on a classic and that’s exactly what we want people to think of when they think of Best Western, which has a nostalgic aspect, but we want them to try us now because there’s so many different brands within the portfolio. We used the music as a conduit to memorability.
HOTELS: Back to the song. The Band recorded “The Weight” in 1968 and the song still carries weight today—no pun intended. What was the choice there?
Park: We licensed the song. We recorded it. And the texture in her voice really stands out; she brought this rich quality modern feel to it. The lyrics are intentional: “Take a load off.” That’s what we want to do for these travelers. We’ve actually done something different, even with our audio. We’re running the song very simply against the line: “Check in so you can check out.” It’s a different way of advertising.
HOTELS: BWH Hotels has grown to 18 brands in a rather short period of time. Unlike some other hotel companies, whose media campaigns promote the wide breadth of brands available, the “Life’s a Trip” campaign only showcases Best Western. Why?
Park: It was intentional. What we did was simplify the message. While everyone else touts all the different brands within, we double downed on the brand with the highest awareness, Best Western. Let’s connect with them emotionally and show the sophistication of the brand. Once they’re in the customer journey, and this is part of our marketing strategy, with targeting and data, we introduce the full portfolio—the different brands, our loyalty program—and we do that through the digital channels. This allowed us to have more space and time for storytelling, to emotionally connect and then draw them in and introduce the rest of the portfolio. There’s no linear path in the customer journey.
HOTELS: How do you foresee the campaign evolving?
Park: This is a multiyear journey. We’re starting with elevating the perception of Best Western and what you thought you knew. Then, as we progress, we’ll look at touting the portfolio and to potentially explore that in video, as well. It’s an integrated marketing plan. We are everywhere from Food Network to Discovery Channel and more. Then you have streaming and over-the-top services, from Peacock to Roku and YouTube. That’s where I have a lot of fun because I love data. And that’s where you can start to retarget—so you might see the spot first that features the Jack Russell if you’re an adventurer or outdoorsy, but then you might see the six-second spot that touts the latest promotion. We also have a sponsorship on MLB Network because, through data, we saw that many who stay and consider Best Western love baseball, so it slots right in. It’s the same idea to emotionally connect through Facebook and Instagram, for example. Families are so busy in these apps; they’re checking constantly and we’re showing up there.
HOTELS: There’s a lot of marketing noise out there, especially in the travel space. Airbnb, for one, has taken to the airwaves and basically attacked the entire framework or proposition of a hotel stay. How do you see it all playing out?
Park: It’s not about what Airbnb does or doesn’t do. It’s all about the consumer insight and then the value that we offer that matches that insight. We heard from consumers to keep it real and be authentic. And that means celebrating the ups and the downs and many brands only talk about the ups—they make it seem like it’s all roses. There’s a reality that grandparents love their time with their grandkids and also love the space to relax. Instead of skirting around that and pretending like we want to be together all the time, let’s go there, and show the authentic moment. It shows the value that you have booking a BWH hotel versus home-sharing, but we don’t need to directly go at them.
HOTELS: How much input does Larry Cuculic, BWH Hotels’ CEO, have in the work?
Park: He’s the biggest champion and it has been a pure joy to come to this organization and have a leader who empowers us and challenges us in all the right ways and is open to trying something different. He happens to be a big music lover, so he was thrilled when he saw the direction we were taking.
HOTELS: The new media campaign will run through the summer. What is the timeline after? What’s on the horizon?
Park: We will pair it all with a summer promotion (stay three nights and get 10,000 bonus points). What’s next for us is to expand—so you see we highlight leisure trip occasions, but also talk to business travelers, that we have the amenities that appeal to both. We know that people are blending business and leisure more and more. We’re also partnering with our sales organization to expand, enabling experiences as a strategy and target the b2b segment, too. Then, globally, we’re working with our regions and finding the thread I like to call ‘global consistency, regional relevance’ and striking that balance. We will continue to commit to avoiding the tropes of the industry, the always smiling, having people carrying a briefcase—that kind of thing. It’s got to be authentic and real and working through the emotional connection.
HOTELS: How do you track the impact of a media campaign? What does success look like?
Park: We have a robust measurement dashboard and we track everything from awareness to consideration. Search inquiries is an indication of success of a campaign and we have seen an uptick in branded search inquiries over the same time a year ago since the launch of the campaign. We also do research and testing of the spots with a third party and for the consumers that saw it, it was indexing highly for resonance, likely to consider, likability and relevance. Then, of course, driving right down to revenue, so site visits, looking at ad revenue and then attribution models to make sure that we can attribute the marketing to the revenue.
HOTELS: Do you use focus groups before you launch a campaign to see if it’s resonating?
Park: Yes. In fact, one of the parts that we’re most excited about is the high level of brand recall. We had 84% brand recall and that is high. Part of the reason for that is we took this approach to emotionally connect and we did it with a cinematic feel. We show the brand as if it’s like the opening credits of a movie and find the authentic moments without putting the brand in your face, and then we close with it. That worked and it felt authentic to what we were trying to do.