For Hotels.com, we showed how a brand can remain relevant and useful despite no one needing or able to use its services. We did it by using Captain Obvious to personify the human condition and chart the various emotive stages consumers have been feeling during the pandemic.

In March, with the travel industry in utter turmoil, Hotels.com made the bold move to encourage social distancing and told people to just stay home for their safety and the society at large, with a national TV spot that ran in the US and Canada. We then released a series of “Captain’s Log” videos highlighting the effects of prolonged isolation on our spokesperson. And then at the beginning of June, as states started to lift lock downs, we came back to national TV with a fond remembrance of places, that reminded consumers Hotels.com will be there for them when they feel comfortable to travel again. Finally, in September, we launched the “Future Captain” spot, a time-travel story set to capture the uncertainty and absurdity of 2020.