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When Booking Holdings acquired Momondo in 2017 to pair with fellow metasearch brand Kayak, officials said one of Momondo's core strengths was its brand marketing bonafides. The World Piece video works because it stirs emotions, and this type of dynamic can go a long way toward creating a relationship between consumers and brands.

If travel is indeed about connecting the world’s people and cultures, then Kayak’s metasearch service Momondo has done it again — following the success of its 2016 The DNA Journey video — with a five-minute “film” that ties together some 60 people from all over the globe with contiguous tattoos across their backs.

In The World Piece, the underlying message appears in white lettering within a black background near the end of the video advertisement: “The World Can’t Fall Apart If You Dare to Connect.”

The men and women, of all races, shapes, assorted religions and national origins, who appear in the ad give mini-testimonials about their lives. One man talks of being drafted into his country’s army.

“i’ve been doing whatever I could to break the world apart. I just need to change it. I need to fix it,” he said, explaining why he made the trip to the UK to be part of the film.

A woman describes how she viewed the world in the past. “I hated black people, brown people. I hated Muslims. I really felt afraid of the whole world.”

Asked why he got the tattoo and made the trip to London, a somewhat overweight guy says, “I came for the love. There’s not enough of it.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0L48Ab4W8m0]

That’s one of the appeals of the video; it isn’t made up of starlets or studs, but of regular folks from around the world, imperfections and all.

To create the video, which has attracted some 82 mmillion views across YouTube, Facebook and Instagram since its debut a month ago, recruitment took place via Tattoodo, an online tattoo community, as well as through social media, and other tools. More than 6,500 people applied to be part of the video, which was produced by Smuggler.

The 61 people who were ultimately picked to participate got their tattoos in their home countries, including locales such Taiwan, India, Sweden, Lebanon, Belgium, for example, and shot the film in London.

Kayak’s Approach

Momondo, along with others such as HotelsCombined and Cheapflights, are Kayak brands. Kayak chief marketing officer Tore Pein Jensen told Skift a few weeks ago that creating The World Piece was a cross-team effort, but was led by Kayak’s brand marketing team in Europe.

Jensen said the video didn’t cost a lot of money to make; the difficult part of the creative process is to come up with an idea that will resonate.

Although Kayak puts most of its money into performance marketing on search engines,  brand marketing is extremely important, Jensen said, adding that the key is to find the right balance between the two forms of marketing.

He said the main idea behind the video is to strike up a conversation about the issues addressed, and to get as many views as possible. “We know this will have an affect on business and market share if this works,” Jensen said.

Momondo’s 2017 The DNA journey generated 600 million views, and had a reach of around 1 billion, Jensen said.

But taking a knee-jerk approach in terms of just repeating what worked in the past isn’t a formula for success.

“What worked a year ago is not going to work tomorrow,” Jensen said.

For more on how The World Piece was created, click here.

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Tags: advertising, booking, booking holdings, brand marketing, kayak, marketing, momondo

Photo credit: A screenshot from Momondo's The World Piece video in which some 60 participants create an interwoven tattoo. Momondo

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