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This is my reaction to Kayak’s $10m advertising campaign…

The online travel industry is really crowded. People already search a number of sites before making a purchase online. Everyone stops at Expedia, Orbitz, or Travelocity. A lot of people check out Southwest or Delta directly. Most people do not know about the travel search engines. More and more people are booking directly. With this type of environment, it’s really hard to cut through the noise

Kayak currently does a ton of search marketing and has some quality business development relationships (Pinpoint Travel on AOL is powered by Kayak, although AOL Travel is not). The company builds great tools and has incredibly friendly Web 2.0 type usability. The search results are fairly comprehensive (there’s always more work to do). The company gets mentioned in the press a ton as a top site. But with all of these things going for it, the company has only brought in an additional 200K visitors (aprx) each month since December of ‘05 (according to comScore data). Which means that the company can continue its slow but steady climb, paying more and more for travel related keywords on the search engines, or it can try something new…like a TV campaign..

This is a bold move by Kayak. The travel search engines are stuck in anonymity and no one outside the industry really understands the benefits of using them. With this TV campaign, Kayak can at least get its name out there just as Expedia or Travelocity would (although not on the same scale). The company can look bigger than it is. The company can possibly get more people to check out Kayak.com. And the idea of making the TV commercials web-like and therefore web-ready is really smart. Some of the TV spots will ‘go viral’ and be all over the place in a matter of days…which means more press for the company and more visitors to the site.

Also, I like the user generated TV ad promotion and the execution is clean and simple, although without a voiceover option the ads are REALLY dry [Kayak needs to immediately allow people to insert a voice-track or at least some type of background music].

Finally, as mentioned in the Q&A, the TV campaign will improve click-through rate (CTR) on Kayak’s pay per click (PPC) ads, driving down the company’s click fees (although overall marketing spend should rise with the increased traffic).

In other words, there are a lot of positive things about this campaign if the goal is to get the word out about the company.

Unfortunately, though, I don’t think that’s good enough. I’m looking for more than just a traffic hit. I’m looking for loyal visitors who turn into loyal customers. And if you look carefully at the commercials, you’ll notice that most of them don’t really have a strong call to action. Many just say “There are a million reasons to travel. There’s one site to search before you go. Kayak.com. Life’s a trip.” That’s not enough to drive people away from Expedia and to Kayak…or away from Google and to Kayak. Some commercials say “More options. More savings. More results.” Now that’s a little better. It gives me a reason to visit the site. But those lines are attached to funny commercials…I’m afraid that the quirky, irreverent content will be first in people’s minds and ‘Kayak.com’ will be 5th.

[Kayak, please pay attention…] Also, when people get to the site, I think they’ll be completely let down. Besides 2 small links on the right hand side of the page, nothing really changed. Kayak’s interface is too ordinary. The creatives the Brooklyn Brothers did for Kayak look like they belong on FareCast (with it’s bright, welcoming colors), not Kayak. It’s a fun, creative campaign…some of that style needs to flow back to Kayak.com. The site needs to be more integrated with the campaign.

Also, the tagline ‘Life’s a Trip’ is in tiny text on the right hand side of the page, while ‘Search with us, book with them’ is still very prominent. I’ve always thought that ‘book with them’ is a very dangerous motto as the uninitiated might just open up a second browser and go directly to AA.com to book.

In the end, I love the idea of the campaign because the travel search engines need to try something different or they’ll live in obscurity forever. I hate the idea because Kayak is not going to get $10m worth of revenue from the campaign anytime soon.

So does this campaign signify a web 2.0 bubble or is this a brilliant move by Kayak? No bubble here, just a small company taking a BIG risk. Which is a good thing. Will this turn Kayak into a household name? I doubt it, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Related:
Interview with Kayak CMO Dean Harris - July 10, 2006
Kayak.com Commercials - July 10, 2006
Kayak.com Official Press Release - July 10, 2006