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CAUSE MARKETING
Image courtesy of Hotels.com.
vacation time in the absence of adequate federal regulation. According to the Center for Economic Policy and Research, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit economic policy think tank, the governments of France, Argentina, Russia, Australia and Japan guarantee their citizens 30, 14, 28, 20 and 10 paid vacation days per year, respectively, while the United States is the only industrialized nation that does not require workplaces to offer paid vacation time. Moreover, one in four working Americans, or 28 million U.S. citizens, don’t get any paid time off. Those facts, coupled with CP+B’s creative strategies, made for a compelling pitch, so Hotels.com hired the agency and decided to address the U.S. vacation day policy head-on as a cause marketing and brand-building initiative.
The Right to R&R Hotels.com launches a cause marketing effort to fight for Americans’ right to some rest and relaxation BY CHRISTINE BIRKNER | SENIOR STAFF WRITER
cbirkner@ama.org Goal Many Americans envy the European custom of taking month-long summer vacations. Others would simply like to be able to take a mental health day now and then without the stigma attached to office absences. Unfortunately, for many U.S. workers, vacation time is a luxury that they can enjoy too infrequently— and unlike in other industrialized nations, workers in the United States actually aren’t guaranteed any paid time off by law. For Dallas-based Hotels.com, that legal status was a golden cause marketing opportunity.
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Personal travel outweighs business travel as a percentage of Hotels.com’s business, according to the company, so the e-commerce hub for hotel deals, hotel and flight packages, and group travel scheduling relies on U.S. consumers’ desire and ability to take time away from work to travel. When Hotels.com was looking for a new agency of record in 2013, Boulder, Colo.-based agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky (CP+B) unearthed some telling statistics that demonstrated that Hotels.com’s customer base might be hampered by a lack of
Action To make sure that the issue of “vacation equality” would resonate with consumers, Hotels.com hired global research firm GfK to conduct a phone survey in June 2014 to find out whether Americans were aware of the lack of a federal mandate for paid time off. “We found that a majority of people weren’t aware of it, and that they would support change,” says Neha Parikh, vice president and general manager of Hotels.com. In July 2014, Hotels.com launched the Vacation Equality Project, a digitally focused campaign with a website, VacationEqualityProject.com, that features an interactive map showing the number of vacation days granted to workers around the world, and statistics on how paid vacation time benefits businesses and the economy. For example, 79% of Americans believe that vacation time positively affects their health and well-being, according to the Hotels.com/GfK phone survey. And according to an American Express OPEN survey of small-business owners, one-third of small-business owners say that their best ideas come during their down time. Site visitors are encouraged to discuss the issue on their own social channels using the hashtag #VacationEquality.
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CAUSE MARKETING
From July 17 through Aug. 15, the website also included a digital petition asking President Obama to change the laws on guaranteed vacation time. “[The petition] seemed like a great vehicle to raise our issue on,” Parikh says. “We wanted to take it a step further and see how much support we could get.” While the petition window has closed, the Vacation Equality Project’s site is still live. The site’s branding is intentionally subtle, with the Hotels.com logo appearing at the bottom of the Web page. “You could easily see how it could feel inauthentic, like, travel companies obviously support vacation equality,” Parikh says. “We knew putting our name all over it or having our logo in the header would increase the notion that it was selfserving. We wanted to move away from that. If we can help drive awareness to the issue, and change, that’s a victory.” Adds Dan Donovan, vice president and executive creative director at CP+B, and the lead creative on the Hotels.com project: “We certainly wanted people to know where the message was coming from, but it wasn’t about promoting the brand or its products and services, so it felt like the right thing to lead with the message, lead with the issue, and get people to participate.” To get the word out about the Vacation Equality Project, Hotels.com developed YouTube videos and a press outreach plan, and promoted the effort on the company’s social media channels. Parikh and her team decided against print or TV ads because they wanted the effort to have a grassroots feel, she says. “It goes back to why we didn’t put our name all over the page. We wanted to make the message simple and we wanted there to be a call to action. We were focused on the organic support.” Hotels.com tapped its senior leadership to lend promotional support. Johan Svanstrom, president of Hotels.com, and Dara Khosrowshahi, president and CEO of Bellevue, Wash.-based Expedia Inc., Hotels.com’s parent company, wrote LinkedIn posts and tweeted about the effort from their personal accounts. Garnering C-suite buy-in for the campaign wasn’t difficult, Parikh says.
“No one ever asked us what the ROI was. It was coming out and saying, ‘This is something we believe in.’ Travel and time off are inherent to the core beliefs of our brand.” Take Back Your Time, a Seattle-based advocacy group that supports workers’ rights and paid time off, also helped to promote the Vacation Equality Project by posting about it on its website. “John de Graaf, the founder, has been passionate about this issue for 10 years and pushing for legislature around this, so we contacted him, and we’re still working with him to see how we can continue to support this issue,” Parikh says.
COMPANY
Hotels.com HEADQUARTERS
Dallas CAMPAIGN TIMELINE
July 17 to Aug. 15, 2014 RESULTS
The effort garnered 7.5 million total impressions, which includes views of the video on the Vacation Equality Project website and shares on Facebook and Twitter. There were 350,000 views of the video on YouTube. The effort received mentions in Mashable, Fast Company, The Boston Globe, USA Today and The Washington Post.
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Results From July 17 to August 15, 2014, the effort garnered 7.5 million total impressions, which included views of the video on the Vacation Equality Project website and shares on Facebook and Twitter. There were 350,000 views of the video on YouTube. The effort received mentions in Mashable, Fast Company, The Boston Globe, USA Today and The Washington Post. Hotels.com declined to disclose the budget for the campaign. The petition garnered 17,120 signatures, short of the 100,000 signatures necessary for an official White House response. However, each person who signed the petition was required to include his or her zip code with their signatures, so Hotels.com mailed a postcard to corresponding members of the House of Representatives about the issue, urging them to act. Hotels.com executives also attended the Summit on Working Families in Washington, D.C., this summer to discuss vacation equality and the company is planning more campaigns to back the issue in the future, Parikh says. The Vacation Equality Project met its goal of raising awareness of the need for guaranteed vacation time in America, Parikh says. “This was something our employees could rally around. Seeing the amount of e-mails [from employees] and people stopping to tell me how important it was to them, that was a success. If … on a Friday night around the dinner table, people are debating this, that’s how change starts. We raised awareness, in terms of press coverage and tweets and shares.” The benefits to Hotels.com from this cause marketing initiative are primarily related to brand perception, says Dave Spector, partner at Tambourine, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based digital marketing firm focused on the hotels and hospitality industries. “Any increase in revenue would be an asterisk on their P&L. As a consumer, it leads me to believe that if they care enough to invest resources in an issue like this, they probably also care enough to fix snafus with my reservation.” m
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