TripAdvisor Drops Outmoded Little Wiser Owl Character From Ads
Skift Take
TripAdvisor's new ad campaign is more hip than its usual fare. It also shows where its business is heading with hotel booking eventually having to share the limelight with tours and dining.
If you want to reach millennial and Gen Z travelers, it's debatable whether an owl character, decked out in a bathrobe and perched at times on a hotel room pillow, should be your go-to brand ambassador.
A new TripAdvisor brand campaign, unleashed in the U.S. a week ago on TV and various digital platforms, is almost as noteworthy for the things that are absent than for the content included.
The bathrobe-clad Little Wiser owl character is blissfully missing in action (at least temporarily after first appearing in ads in 2017), and TripAdvisor's recent emphasis on hotel price comparisons and bookings, is nowhere to be seen.
Instead, TripAdvisor rolled out a 30-second spot, Save Things to Do: Global, that focuses on planning things to do either on a couch before you leave for a vacation or in-destination after you arrive.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbd_aeKaOTc]
The ad features a catchy, rhythmic tune, Boom by X Ambassadors, and for around the first 20 seconds of the spot it takes viewers to a San Francisco Love Tour, replete with a woman flashing peace signs with a hippy-lo
