Three weeks agoExpedia revealed its first major new ad campaign in years, replacing the arguably hollow (and linguistically awkward) "Where You Book Matters".
The new slogan is "Find Yours".
At the centre of the campaign is the use of consumer generated content - perhaps a throw back to the good old days of travel advertising and marketing where people tried to encourage more travel rather than just trying to steal it from competitors.
The web is well and truly saturated with travel offers but surprisingly limited capacity – as such the market has turned in some sectors (like airlines) from a demand side to a supply side-scarce commodity market. In that situation what's a marketeer to do?
Expedia is to be commended for taking the moral high ground and trying to rise above it with its new campaign. However, as I was hearing about the new campaign, I felt I had heard this story before.
They say that there is nothing new in advertising (and I used to be an ad man a long time ago!) and, well, the new campaign was just a bit too familiar.
Rummaging around, I found something very similar from a different OTA.
Eureka! The Expedia campaign is remarkably like a campaign run by India-based OTA Cleartrip last year.
Expedia hired 180LA, an award winning creative agency in Los Angeles, California, which came up with this:
At the centre of this campaign is the UGC. But check out the YouTube Channel for ClearTrip and you will see what I mean - this has been done before and quite effectively.
Cleartrip went with the concept of "Every trip has a purpose", tied into its core principle of making travel simple.
If you would like to see the making of the videos you can go check out its blog on the subject from January 2011.
Do you think that the two sets of messaging appear to be pretty similar?
I asked Cleartrip's Hrush Bhatt about it:
"Ever since we launched, we've been used to being imitated.
"Although, I must say that until now, most of our imitators have been local companies. And since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I must say we're flattered to now be imitated on the global stage."
[It's not the first time ClearTrip has found itself on the receiving end of imitators - check out this snippet].
Nevertheless, more power to both companies (particularly since they cooperate in the domestic India market as Cleartrip has been powering Expedia's India domestic air product for several years).
But it seems Expedia might be learning about other things than air distribution from its Indian friends.