The whimsical new ad campaign that might make you care about Club Med again

Do your office daydreams consist images of you wake boarding on dolphins, receiving poolside service from a snowman, skiing on the clouds, or dancing under a moon that glitter like a disco ball? Club Med wants to take you there or anywhere your imagination wanders.

Club Med is launching a new global brand campaign, which features whimsical vacation scenes and asks travelers, “And what’s your idea of happiness?” The ads feature 16 metaphorical images that put a dreamlike twist on the average beachside or mountaintop daydream.

The campaign is based on the club’s upscale rebranding and is meant to mark the group’s return to its founder Gérard Blitz’s original image of the club. He said, “We are in touch with something mysterious: mankind’s inner liberation”.

The campaign created by Saatchi & Saatchi + Duke in Paris will be seen in 22 languages across 47 different countries on outdoor ads, online, and in traditional print platforms.

The slogan had to be altered for different regions depending on consumers’ relationships with advertising.

For example, in Asia, consumers didn’t understand why a brand would ask them a question so the signature was turned into an affirmative statement: “More happiness than you can imagine.” In the UK and Germany, ‘happiness’ is too conceptual a term to describe a vacation so the tagline is altered to focus on the imagination: “Where will your imagination take you?”

The ads started showing up in Europe and Asia this month, and will appear in the United States this March.

Club Med reported a net income of 35 million euros, up 73 percent year-over-year. The Group’s growth has given it the confidence to look into rapid expansion in developing markets such as China, Brazil, and Russia through 2015.

Click on the thumbnails below to see the full ads: