Adweek has just reported that agency Crispin Porter & Bogusky, creators of the “Captain Obvious” character and campaigns for Hotels.com, has lost the account. Why? Take a look at the latest commercials — it’s pretty obvious.
In 2014, Hotels.com and its new ad agency Crispin Porter & Bogusky London introduced “Captain Obvious” (actor Brandon Moynihan) — a wacky character who makes self-evident statements and plugs Hotels.com as the obvious choice for booking rooms.
(Look, everybody! Another “funny” mascot!)
I suppose the first time I really noticed this campaign was when I saw “Romance,” a truly awful ad featuring a woman in a bathtub and her husband using the toilet beside her.
Below: Hotels.com brings the bathroom humor in this ad, titled “Romance.”
OK, now look. I am not without a sense of humor. I enjoy a good fart or dick joke as much as anyone. If this were a comedy skit, I might even laugh. But it’s not.
It’s a TV commercial, and in that context, it stinks.
I remember being confused by the guy in the beard and uniform. Was he a boat captain? A war hero? As someone who usually tunes out commercials, I was only half listening to the ad.
Mildly annoyed by the dissonance, I wondered: what the hell was Hotels.com, and how did this guy fit in?
Truth be told, he didn’t.
Or rather, he shouldn’t have.
In case you hadn’t noticed, this 30-second commercial spends a grand total of 5 seconds on its key selling message — the rest is just farting around.
And what is this key message?
“Don’t hate-like their trip. Book yours with Hotels.com and get rewarded basically everywhere.”
Uh-huh. Genius.
I still didn’t understand what Hotels.com was or why I should use it.
Hey, CB & P — do you think this might be part of the reason you lost the account?
What is Hotels.com?
To the uninitiated (including, I suspect, most who have seen the commercials), Hotels.com is an online travel agency — a website you can use to book travel. Don’t let the name fool you. Although the site is billed as a tool for finding and reserving hotels, it also offers flights and vacation packages.
The company is an affiliate of Expedia, the company which also owns Trivago, Orbitz, and Travelocity. The idea seems to be that by using Hotels.com, travelers can save money and earn rewards including free overnight stays.
That’s the pitch. Or it should be.
Your experience, however, may differ.
As it turns out, in practice, it’s often cheaper to book directly with a hotel than through Hotels.com. But that’s a whole other can of worms.
Let’s look at the ads.
Hotels.com’s latest (last?) Captain Obvious commercials
The first of the new batch of Hotels.com commercials I saw was an ad called “Breakup.” The oh-so clever idea behind this ad and its sibling, “Interrogation” (below), is to capture viewers’ attention by telling a dramatic story.
Ultimately, it’s just an excuse to make a bunch of noise.
Two dudes emerge from a big-city apartment building, yelling at each other in the rain. It appears to be a gay couple in the middle of a tiff.
“How are you STILL so unsure of this, Steven?” shouts one guy.
“What am I supposed to do, LEAVE MY FAMILY?” the other shouts back.
“YES! People do it EVERY DAY,” shouts the shouty first guy.
It is then that the wacky Captain Obvious steps in, revealing to us that this is not about a struggling gay couple at all, but rather . . . wait for iiiit . . . a bachelor party.
At long last, after complimenting one of the guys (Chad Michael Murray of “One Tree Hill” fame) on his pectoral muscles and yet more shouting, the Captain delivers his message: “Booking a trip can feel dramatic, but with free cancellation, you can’t go wrong with Hotels.com.”
Right. You know, as if most hotels don’t already offer free cancellations within 24 hours of arrival.
Below: This ad, titled “Breakup,” appears at first to be about a gay couple arguing about their relationship.
Honestly, CP & B, why all the subtext? You do realize this isn’t funny, right? That it makes people feel uncomfortable and confused and offended?
I’m not even kidding. I’ve read a number of online dust-ups among straight and especially gay people who take great issue with this commercial.
So, great job, ad pros! Not only have you wasted your client’s time and money on a 30-second debacle that fails to communicate even a slightly compelling sales message, but you’ve pissed off a bunch of potential customers over a dumb and completely unnecessary gay joke.
Below: The second ad in the “drama” campaign, titled “Interrogation,” uses an even less funny hostage setup to deliver the same utterly non-existent selling point. Bonus question: Is all that yelling and banging on tables appropriate for all audiences?
Next up, Captain Obvious gets punny about sex education
The newest Hotels.com commercials employ perhaps the wackiest gimmick yet.
In these ads, Captain Obvious has traveled back to the 1990s to teach us how to “Practice Safe Booking.” Dressed in a multicolored jumpsuit and dancing along to his very own sitcom intro — in a brazen waste of the ad’s shorter-than-normal 24-second run time — our ill-conceived mascot shocks viewers with a head-turning double entendre.
“We all know you’re gonna do it,” says the captain. “But you might as well be safe about it. If you’re gonna pull out,” — here, a very pregnant pause — “book with Hotels.com.”
Get it? It’s another joke about free hotel cancellations. “So you can experience the intense pleasure of booking a trip, without any of the unnecessary commitments.”
Holy hell, who writes this shit?
I swear, I wrote better ad copy for my 10th-grade marketing class project in which I helped two classmates build a mock business called Dr. Whoopie’s Condom Delivery Service.
Below: The first ad in the “Safe Booking” campaign, titled “Pleasure of Booking,” talks about “pulling out” as a euphemism for early cancellation.
Another ad in this campaign jokes about sleeping around.
“It’s OK to do it more than once,” Captain Obvious extols. “Unlike your judgy friends, Hotels.com won’t shame you for sleeping around in ten different beds. In fact, you’ll get rewarded — with a reward night.
“So don’t be a fool. Sleeping around is cool.”
Below: The Hotels.com ad, “Sleep Around.”
There are two more ads in the “Safe Booking” series, but you get the idea. I won’t waste your time or my bandwidth. If you really want to see them, they’re called “Protection” and “Whatever You’re Into,” and a quick Google search should get you there.
What these Hotels.com ads get wrong
Where do I begin?
The Captain Obvious commercials fall into several traps:
The “humor” trap.
The “mascot” trap.
The “loud noises” trap.
For the life of me, I can’t understand why any brand would choose to be represented by such a goofy, unserious character with absolutely no relevance or relationship to the product being sold.
And yet, most of these problems could be at least somewhat forgiven if the ads communicated a compelling reason to buy.
But they do not.
Oh, how I would love to know how much money Hotels.com has spent on these ads over the years.
Hotels.com and Captain Obvious: The Cranky Ad Review verdict
I get tired of saying this, but what we have here is yet another case of advertising people who got so caught up in “being creative” that they forgot the job of selling that they were being paid to do.
The result? These Hotels.com commercials are 180 degrees opposite of what good advertising should be.
You know, I really do not wish ill on anyone. But maybe it’s best if some of the agencies behind this kind of marketing malpractice do go bust and bow out.
There is a cautionary tale here for advertisers who would heed it:
Your clients have products to sell. That is why they pay you. They don’t want jokes. They need results.
Shouldn’t this be obvious?
Ad rating: One oblivious star out of five.
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I love these commercials and don’t think gay people were the butt of a joke because they were gay, they were being normalized. Everything was a joke in these commercials. It’s humour, that’s the point!
Your interpretation of the gay joke is very charitable, Anonymous. A lot of people don’t see it as being nearly as innocuous as you do, and given the “bachelor-party” punchline, I don’t think it was an attempt to normalize gay relationships at all.
But that’s the danger of using humor in advertising, isn’t it? Humor is subjective, and as a result, it’s often risky — a fact that too many of today’s creatives don’t understand.
I wasn’t sure if I was the only one who was offended by the “surprise, we’re not really a gay couple ha ha smirk smirk” commercial, so I searched and was relieved to have found you. As a gay man, all this ad does is flashback the offensive nonsense from the past. I honestly can’t believe this is still running. I haven’t (yet) found any complaints from any watchdog organizations which is surprising to me. And, yes, the rest of the ads are really bad too.
Hi, Jamie. I’m glad you found the blog. Yes, the gay gag here is baffling, even more so when you consider that this ad ran frequently all during Gay Pride Month. Maybe those behind this commercial were under some weird delusion that they were somehow supporting the cause?
I think it’s both sad and reprehensible that so many advertisers have no problem pandering to different groups when they believe it will benefit them — but will then turn around and make dumb jokes at those same people’s expense when they think they’ve got a knee-slapper.
All we can do is hold these self-serving companies accountable. Write, call, and flood their social media. And don’t fall for their schtick.
Thanks for writing, Jamie.
After hearing the hotel.com commercials and all the yelling it makes me cringe. I would never want to book a hotel with this attitude. Booking a hotel should be made as relaxing as possible not yelling and cringe worthy attitudes.
Oh, how right you are, Emmy. Booking a hotel should be a pleasant experience. As a customer, every step of the buying process provides a hint as to whether or not I’ve made the right decision and chosen a hotel/airline/booking service/whatever that’s going to make my vacation a pleasant one.
These types of commercials with their goofy characters and cringe-worthy theatrics make Hotels.com a nonstarter for me.
Hey, ad makers — how about putting yourselves into the shoes of potential customers like Emmy the next time you sit down to write an ad?
Thanks, Emmy.
When I first saw one of these commercials several years ago I thought, ” what is this?” A crazy street person in an old band uniform burst into a vacationers room, stomped across the bed, and began raving some unintelligible nonsense about a company I had never heard of, and as result of what I had just witnessed, would never trust. Subsequent commercials only reinforced this reaction. It seemed like one of the worst ideas I had ever seen for an advertising campaign.
I see we had similar reactions to this campaign, Oliver. And it turns out we were right, given that the agency responsible for this chaff has apparently been sent packing. (Pun definitely intended.)
Thanks for sharing your comment, and let’s hope for some better ads from this company in the future!
I literally arrived at this article from Google because I just saw the ad with the two men arguing outside with the dumb joke about gay relationships that follows. Great, let’s make gay relationships the butt of an unclever joke. Let’s also launch it at the end of pride month. Cool. 😒
The tone-deafness really is breathtaking, isn’t it?
Love this review (obviously a little biased here) especially because I HATE these commercials! I’m not in advertising, but it almost feels like these people (ad agency) went to the same school as the idiots who did the Robbert jokester of Simply Safe (hate those too).