While we had been a sponsor of the NBA, to fans we were no more than a logo on a backboard. With over 48 sponsors, many with cultural cachet and ingrained presence in basketball, how could we break through the clutter and begin building equity with the fanbase?

The ask was simple: use our sponsorship to increase brand favorability and consideration amongst the valuable fan audience who traveled more frequently than most.

We had already begun with our new brand platform, Find Your Perfect Somewhere that positioned ourselves as a matchmaker between travelers and hotels, building off a universal truth that there is no one ‘perfect’ anything, just ‘perfect for you’.

We set out to bring to life this truth in the context of the NBA, to grow our equity and fame as a matchmaker among fans.

The film opens on our hotel front desk stars on a normal work day. Barinholtz brings up a famous guest the hotel recently hosted, Anthony Davis, or “AD.” He proceeds to speak to the hotel’s ability to provide AD with all the comforts he needs to bring his best performance to the court. Calling out the 8,000 pima cotton sheets, the 300 points he scores, the big towels and robes the hotel provides for the big man and how that hotel is his “perfect somewhere” - the brand tagline.

Our audience of NBA fans used travel to set themselves apart from the crowd, where the way they traveled defined who they are. As such, each had unique preferences and tastes when it came to what they look for and where they stay.

But what’s best for one, isn’t best for all. And for NBA champs, it’s even more personal.

Taking this insight and knowing fans' affinity for NBA stars, we shifted the lens to the players. What would be a perfect hotel stay for an NBA star?

Building on the established equity of our Find Your Perfect Somewhere creative platform (where Hotels.com matched travelers to the perfect hotel for them), our approach was to humorously dramatize how Hotels.com deeply understands the needs of pro NBA athletes on the road.

By the end of the season, we boosted one of our essential brand attributes amongst NBA fans by a margin of +10% (compared to general population) who saw us as 'an expert in travel'. We had also moved upwards the harder-to-shift metrics of consideration and favorability by +4% each. Given that general population media and a campaign was running alongside our effort, the difference between fan and non-fans; as well as our increase in sponsorship awareness meant that we could isolate this back to our effort.