Online travel booking is one of the most competitive categories, where consumers treat brands interchangeably.

While Booking.com is the category leader in Europe, in the U.S., they follow Expedia and Airbnb. And they are typically thought of for international stays, not domestic hotels or homes, which make up the largest share of American travel.

Our brief was to create preference among American travelers by dramatizing Booking.com’s wide range of domestic accommodations. We needed to make this choice meaningful and differentiating despite similar claims from every online travel agent (OTA).

We also had to dramatize this benefit so distinctively it would stand out on the world’s biggest advertising stage, the Super Bowl, with an American traveler over-familiar with the inspirational, and often worthy, conventions of travel advertising.

There are simply too many accommodations on Booking.com for celebrity spokesperson Tina Fey to promote on her own. So she hires ‘body doubles’ to help her, including 30 Rock co-stars Jane Krakowski, Jack McBrayer and the iconic Hollywood actress Glenn Close.

Set in the bright, vibrant and distinctively Booking.com world Tina was the perfect spokesperson not just for Booking.com, but for our stressed-out target.

And with a ridiculous number of body doubles (49 to be exact) this entertainment-led campaign gave us the opportunity to talk about any type of accommodation to any travel audience.

Through a mix of focus groups and surveys with our audience, we arrived at our core insight. Travel at its best gives us the freedom to explore different versions of ourselves, outside the limits of our everyday personas.

Some felt that this travel self was a chance to let out their “true self” that they kept hidden in their everyday lives, while others considered travel a chance to try being someone different: the more adventurous, spontaneous, cultured version that most days lives in our imagination.

This was especially relevant for the evolving desires of travelers in 2024, where travel has become a process of identity formation. 64% of travelers report feeling ‘main character energy’ while traveling and 50% even said they had a ‘traveler alter-ego.’

By tapping into this truth we could show that the fun of booking is choosing the person you could be on the trip.

We needed a spokesperson who had the comedic chops to embody the concept’s irreverence, but also an iconic look our body doubles could play off. With her blunt haircut, iconic glasses, and unmatched self-deprecating humor, Tina Fey was the perfect choice. The next challenge was casting the ‘Tina Feykes.’

We saw over 1000 auditions in New York, Chicago, LA, and Mexico City. Featuring Tina lookalikes at the outset was key for clarity, but casting Tina doppelgangers throughout wouldn’t push the idea enough. Each ‘Tina’ needed to surprise our audience. So we created ‘The Six Stages of Tina Feykes’, a categorized scale that informed every casting decision, from Stage 1: ‘the best Tina lookalike money can buy’ to Stage 6: ‘that’s not even a human, but it still looks like Tina’. The result was an ensemble of 49 Tinas that included everyone from an eight-time Oscar nominee to a sasquatch.

‘Book Whoever You Want to Be’ was the most watched Super Bowl ad on YouTube, garnering over 130 million views to date. The film was also crowned as the Super Bowl’s most effective ad by global research firm Kantar, with strong scores on Impact (91), Enjoyment (88) and Likelihood to drive Brand Equity in the long term (89). The campaign also generated a high volume of earned media coverage, with more than 2,900 stories. Independent 3rd-party brand tracking by YouGov highlighted Booking.com as the brand with the the biggest jump in Consideration post-campaign.