Rallying Travelers in Tough Times

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Rallying Travelers in Tough Times

Choice Hotels moved quickly after 9/11 with a campaign that boosted its visibility and increased market share.

Hotels International was about to launch a new advertising campaign last fall when the events of September 11 threw the travel and hospitality industries into an urgent crisis. Within weeks, Choice had tabled the campaign and come up with an alternative that not only boosted the company’s market share but also became a rallying cry for much of the travel industry.

As the second-largest U.S. franchiser of hotels, Choice operates more than 5,000 mid-price properties under eight separate brands, including Comfort and Quality Inns. After finding itself struggling under a highly fragmented marketing program, Choice hired Arnold Worldwide/Washington to create a new corporate branding program.

Arnold began researching Choice’s image, surveying customers, employees and vendors. “We don’t go looking for what’s wrong with a brand,” explains AW/W senior vice president and director of media Diane Lewis. “We talk to people who like the brand and ask them why. We learned that these ‘true travelers’ enjoy being somewhere different and like the face-to-face contact that travel involves.”

Arnold found out that when Choice customers travel, they are unfamiliar with local TV affiliates and feel most comfortable turning to cable. “It’s a constant,” says Kelly Storch, AW/W’s associate media director. “They don’t want to hear the local farm report or local crime stories. They want to know the weather, the news, and major entertainment and sports information, so they have come to rely on cable.”

AW/W’s initial campaign for Choice zeroed in on customers’ love of being on the road and captured that feeling in the slogan, “The Power of Being There. Go.” Then 3,000 people were killed in four terrifying plane crashes on September 11. For several days, all civilian flights were cancelled and the hospitality industry suffered devastating losses as frightened travelers cancelled trips and stayed home.

Arnold needed to act fast and find an effective way to encourage people to travel again. It wanted a message that was compassionate and selfless, but that ultimately would persuade customers to choose Choice Hotels. It decided to delve more deeply into something it had picked up on while conducting its initial research: a pre disposition toward patriotic messaging.

Immediately after 9/11, Arnold conducted consumer “Mood and Mindset” studies, which revealed that Americans wanted to maintain the continuity of their everyday lives and re-establish their customs and habits. So Arnold rapidly put together a campaign positioning travel as a patriotic freedom, depicting an American flag and the slogan “Thanks for Traveling” on a yellow background.

Choice quickly okayed the concept and Arnold hired four vendors to produce 15,000 banners, buttons, shirts and hats for distribution to their hotel properties, public officials and key influencers. The campaign became a rallying cry for the entire travel and hospitality industry.

It was launched to maximum national publicity at the re-opening of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, when swarms of Arnold employees handed out “Thanks” gear to everyone in sight. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Minetta, Virginia’s Governor Jim Gilmore and Senator George Allen were among the many who wore “Thanks” hats and buttons on network TV interviews that day. Subsequently, a congressman handed out the buttons to his 434 colleagues, Choice Hotels was honored for the campaign at a Capitol Hill news conference, and company president Chuck Ledsinger was invited by the White House to the president’s signing of the airline security bill.

For the first two weeks of the campaign, nothing identified Choice with the “Thanks” campaign, but in the second phase, Choice added its logo and began using cable networks to target commercials specifically to business and pleasure travelers. Those networks included The Weather Channel, Travel Channel, Discovery, TLC, ESPN and the Turner outlets.

A new Web site, www.thanksfortraveling.com, was created, allowing any travel or hospitality organization to download the logo free of charge for use in its communications. Since the “Thanks” material was unbranded, organizations such as AAA and Travelers’ Aid, retailer and consumer groups, airlines and airports started distributing it. The Washington Airport Authority requested and handed out 20,000 buttons. Choice franchisees hung “Thanks for Traveling” banners in their lobbies, in front of their hotels and from freeway overpasses. The campaign generated an enormous amount of national television and print news coverage.

Then, after two weeks of the unbranded “stealth” campaign, Arnold began integrating the positioning and logo into a substantial Choice Hotels brand-advertising campaign, featuring television (66 percent cable, 34 percent broadcast), out-of-home, collateral, interactive, print, and event and direct marketing. The 30-second TV spots contained vignettes of business and pleasure travel at various locations and ended with the “Thanks for Traveling” banner—along with the Choice Hotels logo and a list of its constituent brands.

“With our cable buy, we avoided news programs—because they were upsetting to travelers—and concentrated instead on feature and lifestyle programming,” Lewis recalls. “The Weather Channel was a key buy for us because travelers staying at Choice properties regularly turn to it for the local forecast and to see whether they should dress warmer or leave earlier for their next destination. Our research has also found that Discovery, ESPN, TLC and the Turner channels are among a set of networks that outperform other networks with travelers.”

Within a few months, Choice was back up to its pre-9/11 occupancy levels, a benchmark it says it reached ahead of competitors. Most significantly, the campaign helped the company gain market share—albeit a larger share of the smaller post-9/11 traveler pie. “There has been very positive nationwide and community reaction, as well as strong internal response—as ‘Thanks for Traveling’ became a rallying cry for our franchisees, who really got behind it,” Lewis says. “The campaign cast Choice Hotels in a positive and patriotic light while positioning the company as an industry leader.”

Although “Thanks for Traveling” ran its course last fall and winter, Lewis vows that “cable will have a role in our future Choice Hotels campaigns.”

“The Weather Channel was a key buy for us because travelers staying at Choice properties regularly turn to it for the local forecast.”

—Diane Lewis, Senior Vice President and Director of Media, Arnold Worldwide/Washington

Reprinted with the permission of Adweek Magazines.

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