Hotels.com’s voice and share was fading in a category getting increasingly cluttered and commoditized. They needed a campaign that would get people talking about them again, one that would make a compelling argument for choosing Hotels.com over the ever-increasing number of competitors. So we created the Obvious Choice campaign. And we created the man – Captain Obvious – to launch it. We introduced Captain Obvious to the world with online videos on Facebook. We followed with television, radio and OOH. At each touchpoint Captain Obvious’ unique voice made the inarguable case for why he always uses Hotels.com and why everyone should to. Because his voice is so unique we gave him more platforms to speak from following the launch including the @CaptainObvious Twitter handle. There he engages with more than 130K followers to date. The campaign has been a clear success for Hotels.com, increasing traffic to the site by new users and first time users by over 20% year over year.

We created detailed replicas of Captain Obvious’ uniform and branded packaging and used several methods to determine which of his followers on Twitter to give them to. We gave some to followers who showed evidence of being influential (they had many followers and were active users), we gave some to fans who had already posted photos of themselves in their homemade Captain Obvious costumes, we also ran a #hashtag contest asking people to tag their friends who post obvious statements on Twitter for a chance to receive a free costume.

Giving away custom Captain Obvious costumes on Twitter has contributed to his follower total growing to over 130k as of this writing. He currently gains over 1000 followers a day on average. The value it is bringing is being a channel with growing followers where Hotels.com can promote their brand for free.