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Kayak today launched a 10 million dollar, yes, 10 million dollar TV advertising campaign which includes TV commercials. And it’s not just any advertising campaign…it has the potential to be the talk of the water cooler, go crazy on YouTube, and be on a ton of MySpace pages.

Check out how Kayak is presenting the ads on its site. Kayak is running a promotion where users can create their own Kayak ad through a set of very easy tools and email the ads to friends. The producer of the best user generated ad will be flown to NYC to see his ad made and then Kayak will air the commercial on TV. At last count there were about 12 user generated Kayak ads posted on YouTube (a couple are from Kayak employees).

Why did you make the move to Kayak (from Vonage) and what have you been up to since you arrived?
Dean: I moved to Kayak because it represents a terrific brand that will only get stronger. I love the idea, the people, and the VC support. There’s the potential to do good for consumers and for Kayak employees and investors. What I’ve been doing is trying to develop a creative strategy and plan for the brand. I’ve been here for less than 4 months. We’ve made some changes to our site. We started to build the community and now have a better handle of the unique identity of the brand. I’m responsible for all marketing which is a combination of branding and direct marketing. It’ll be much easier for Kayak to gain traffic to the site if there is awareness of the brand.

My background is in online direct marketing which means that I don’t always understand branding. I still don’t understand the value of a 30 second TV spot for a car company on a popular Thursday night show because you can’t clearly measure the results…
Dean: My background is in both branding and direct marketing. All communication with consumers is a combination branding and direct marketing. What you see here is not formulated with respect to one or the other. We’ve come up with 13 unique TV spots. It’s interesting creative, but we’re buying ads on direct marketing basis – which means that we get much lower rates and the stations have some flexibility as to when to place ads on air. One of the basics of direct marketing is that cost really matters. Guy Barnett of the Brooklyn Brothers Ad Agency has a background in both branding and direct marketing as well. Making the distinction is not useful as the campaign has to be done in a consistent measurable way.

Guy: We’re both very aware that this advertising has to drive results in terms of getting people to Kayak and using the site, as opposed to being about the long term brand. We’re trying to create a compelling image and a distinctive way of showing our brand which will show in the results. We want consumers to know the name Kayak.com, that there are more options and choices, and that Kayak has a greater offering in terms of travel results.

Dean: We also have far fewer resources so we know this campaign has to work that much harder than others. We don’t have the budget. The creative has to be more distinctive so the ads can be shorter. We produced these spots incredibly efficiently. We have to make ourselves look bigger and stand out with fewer resources. The role [of the campaign] isn’t to educate consumers on how Kayak or Expedia makes money, the role is to get across a consumer friendly message. Whether this is a travel search engine or travel agent is immaterial right now. The goal is to get people to enjoy the service and know Kayak is a better choice.

Why did you decide to commit to TV advertising?
Kellie: We’re all [the travel search engines] lagging behind the online travel agents (OTAs). How do we compete? We hired a CMO, and let him decide. It wasn’t that we wanted TV, it was that we wanted to be a household name.

How is this campaign similar or different than the campaigns you ran at Vonage?
Dean: It’s similar in several respects. It’s distinctive. There are multiple executions that suggest people will be interested in watching the commercial again or watching the next one to find out what’s new or what’s next. It’s also produced cheaply. We spent money on media vs. production. The difference is that Vonage had a bigger budget.

Who is the campaign targeting?
Dean: Adults 25-54 who are self directed travelers. $60K+ in household income.

What is the goal in launching this TV campaign?
Dean: The goal is to raise awareness of the site. Propel the site to more traffic, awareness, and clicks and push Kayak towards greater heights.

How will you measure success?
Dean: We’ll look at the number of users, look at search volume, look at how other factors are increased as a result of offline spending. Search results will get greater conversion. We’ll essentially look at this investment and see how it makes Kayak more profitable.

Is Kayak profitable? Does a big flashy campaign just mean that we’re in another bubble?
Dean: I don’t think this campaign is big or flashy. And I think that we at Kayak think this is an important and necessary investment. I do believe advertising works and large brands have built their businesses on advertising. I don’t think we’re following a bubble as we’re spending efficiently and with impact. We do a lot of online marketing, and we have an enduring commitment to online. Search is very efficient way to reach people. But cost for online advertising has gone up dramatically. Because of the way we’re buying [the air time for the commercials], we can do this more efficiently offline as opposed to online.

Kellie: We’re very closely to being profitable. We’re focusing on building a brand and driving traffic to the site. We’re growing at a faster rate than the OTAs.

Can you explain more about the efficient nature of the TV campaign?
Dean: It’s a national network cable buy. The cable you have at home with the Discovery Channel or ESPN, you can buy [ads on those channels] locally or nationally (entire country). We’re also buying syndicated programs. That tends to be shows at 7-8pm (like Seinfeld). And we’re actually buying some network, but very efficient network. We have 2 lengths. 15-seconds and 30-seconds. The 30-second spots have a little more depth of sales. But we felt we were able to tell our story in 15 seconds.

Go back to your car dealership example. We have more flexibility. We don’t have to be on Sunday for a Monday sale. We’re buying a rotation – no specifics, just within a range. A prime rotation (8pm – 11pm). You pay less for that than if you say you want to be on NBC at 8pm on Friday night. It’s efficient for us as we still reach the market we want to reach.

The ads seem to have been created with an online viral strategy in mind? Is this true? Was this the goal form the start? Will you put these ads on MySpace, YouTube, etc?
Dean: The ads will be on the website, and we’re having a contest allowing consumers to create their own commercial. The winner gets to see the commercial produced in NYC and then gets to see it on air. You’ll see the ads on YouTube and MySpace. The ads will appear on affiliate sites as streaming videos. This was a contingency for the campaign. Shorter length videos tend to do better on the web. One of the reasons we did 15-seconds is that we knew it would translate better to web use.

The ads are obviously edgy. Is this an effective strategy to drive targeted traffic and get people to actually use the service or is this just to drive traffic?
Dean: I agree that we’re going to get a lot of viral activity and PR activity and this is a supplement to our media campaign. We’ll get the paid for media and in effect incremental media because of the viral nature, the buzz. It’s hard before the fact to tell what buzz you’ll get, because it’s not certain. Everyone’s feeling is that this will generate a lot of activity. People will be interested in this and that will provide additional searches for Kayak.

Why did you go with the JibJab look and feel vs. using actors? [I’m a member of the Screen Actor’s Guild (SAG), I’m obviously not too happy…]
Dean: We use a style that is kind of web friendly. It doesn’t become too huge to download. We wanted this as cost effectively as possible. If we had gone to all these locations using real actors and real animals and real machinery, it would have taken us years. Also because we own the imagery and music, we have the rights to use it as much as we want. We knew this would be viral, and we didn’t want it to be constrained by union rules. If you want it viral, you have to own it or you have to pay through the nose. From the beginning, those were some of the restraints…although we didn’t think of them as restraints…but that was one of the [requirements] to be able to use it was much as we wanted. It’s the same thing with the music. We bought out the music because we wanted to use it as much as possible. It was written specifically for the campaign.

Guy: Kayak is little known. We have to get people to hear of Kayak before they do a transaction. Once they know how enjoyable an experience Kayak can be, people will come back. First we have to make sure people are aware.

Are you making any changes to your site in conjunction with the campaign?
Dean: Yes. We’ve integrated the ‘create your own ad’ promotion and added all the ads to the site.

Anything else?
Guy: As a personal statement for Brooklyn Brothers, it takes us into a different sphere. We don’t usually get to be this irreverent. The easiest thing to do in advertising is not be noticed. The guys at Kayak are smart people who realize the impact you can generate with daring work. They constantly pushed us to be as innovative as possible.