WHEN YOUR WIFE WANTS A EUROPEAN VACATION, GET YOURSELF AN INTERNATIONAL HOTEL CHAIN AS A CLIENT.

 

Inter-Continental Hotels needed a home run ad campaign to beat back the competition of the Hiltons, Marriotts, Four Seasons, Hyatts, Omnis, and Radissons of the world. While my account executives were doing all their research on our prospective client, we discovered that they had the highest customer return rate of any of the hotel chains.

 

My Big Idea hit me like a ton of bricks. Inter-Continental, Again and Again! When planning our the shooting of the ad campaign, I figured I could take my wife Rosie, who had been saying for years she wanted a trip to Europe. So we shot the Inter-Continental hotels in London, Paris, Vienna, Athens, and just for kicks, Washington DC. (We had show a U.S. hotel in an ad campaign on U.S. TV's.)

 

To highlight the tag line, Inter-Continental, Again and Again, I had the managers of the European hotels say it in their native language. Christian Maeder of the Meurice, "Inter-Continental, Encore et Encore;" Wolfgang Grimm of the Althenaeum, "Inter-Continental, Páli Kai Páli:" and John Edmaier of the Inter-Continental Wien, "Wieder Und Wieder."

 

The ad campaign was a tremendous success. (And Rosemary got a three-week European vacation in 5 cities.)