The pandemic brought City Lodge Hotels to its knees. They were forced to tighten their belt and apply cost-cutting measures across the board. And as usual, the biggest casualty was the marketing budget.

At the very same time they asked us to develop a brand campaign to launch their new proposition: Life is Hard. Check into Easy. A proposition that spoke to all the little things that make everyday life hard and can push you to the point where you want a holiday.

So, we created our series of reusable ads that we could repurpose and re-write as many times as we needed to.

You know when life gets so hard, you have no words left? That’s exactly when you should check into a City Lodge hotel.

We wrote three tongue-in-cheek films with no verbal dialogue that spoke to some of the reasons that people may need a break from everyday life. The comedy and messaging of these spots were carried by entirely subtitles.

We called them Reusable Ads.

After we dropped our three films, we kept our eye on social and traditional media outlets to mine for trending topics and narratives that we felt gave us the opportunity to encourage South Africans to take a break. Once we did we re-wrote our pieces to weigh in on the conversations our nation was having at that moment.

Over the years, City Lodge’s business model and clientele has evolved. So, when it came time to re-launch their brand through this campaign, we knew we had to deliver work spoke to a whole new generation of travellers - younger, more connected and tuned into culture and social media. So, whatever we did had to entrench us in the world that world and seed us as a brand with that kind of relevance.

All on a very tight budget.

We wrote three tongue-in-cheek films with no verbal dialogue that spoke to some of the reasons that people may need a break from everyday life. The comedy and message of these spots were carried entirely by subtitles – which means we could jump onto any conversation by simply replacing the titles in our films.

After we dropped our three films, we kept our eye on social and traditional media outlets to mine for trending topics and narratives that we felt gave us the opportunity to encourage South Africans to take a break. This allowed us to entrench City Lodge hotels in culture, making it a brand that has become known for its wry, witty social commentary.

Our campaign had a clear positive impact on City Lodge’s business and their standing in the cultural and social media zeitgeist of South Africa.

The brand experienced an increase in revenue of 18.8% and the occupancy rate increased by 4%.

Google search results surged with the phrase “City Lodge near me” increasing by 375%.

Our social media engagement rate increased by a total of 475% while the campaign earned over a million earned impressions.

In total, our films were viewed over 16 million times.