New Kayak Ad Campaign Wants to Bring Europeans Forward, Not Backwards

After last year’s Brexit vote and the rise of neo-isolationism across the continent, metasearch company Kayak wants to remind Europeans of the benefits travel can bring.

The company has created a new advertising campaign called “European Love Letters,” which will run across several markets beginning on June 5 with a dedicated website slated to go live three days later.

Travelers are being asked to submit love letter videos via Instagram and Facebook under the hashtag #loveurope.

Video booths in London, Berlin, Madrid and Paris will also be used and the project will be supported by Facebook, Instagram, indoor and outdoor cinema advertising, out-of-home and celebrity endorsement.

Kayak wouldn’t reveal exactly how much money it was putting into the campaign but a spokesperson said it was “making a significant spend on social media.”

Kayak’s last major campaign was its “Sheep Happens” commercial, which aired in early 2016. It was developed by an outside agency but Kayak has since created its own in-house creative team in Berlin.

“It’s really an interesting time right now for Europe.  After so much has happened to bring Europe together, it now feels like we are slowly drifting apart.  As a travel company, we think that if more Europeans were to spend time with each other, that we would have a great deal more solidarity and understanding for one another.  We really want to see Europe travel forwards and not backwards,” a spokesperson said.

Although most companies like to avoid being seen as being too political, the current march of right-wing populism has persuaded some travel firms to take a stand.

In September, Celebrity Cruises produced a thinly-veiled attack on Donald Trump that talked about the benefit of opening ourselves up to the world. Expedia trolled Trump on his inauguration day with an anti-wall TV advertisement, and TripAdvisor has spoken out many times about the refugee crisis.

Kayak’s decision to make a push for greater visibility in Europe is interesting, given parent company Priceline Group is in the process of buying rival metasearch business Momondo Group, which is big in the UK and Nordics.

Like Kayak’s new advertisement, Momondo’s recent “The DNA Journey” campaign revolved bringing together people of different national origins.