Vrbo | HomeAway B2C
Multi-channel digital & print asset creation, creative ideation & strategy.
My Vrbo | HomeAway Story.
From May 2016 to October 2019, I’ve worked within Vrbo’s in house agency, The Creative Department.
Vrbo is an online marketplace for short-term holiday rentals, specifically targeting families and groups who are drawn to the whole-home-only offering.
The Vrbo marketplace is two-sided: B2C (people booking holidays and short trips) and B2B (people with second or primary homes to rent short-term).
Vrbo is part of a global family of brands that includes HomeAway(UK, ES, IT, NL, PT), Fewo-Direkt(DE) and Abritel(FR), all owned by Expedia Group. In 2019, Vrbo underwent a rebrand, as part of the longer-term initiative roll out Vrbo worldwide.
My Role: In my time at Vrbo, I’ve worked on a huge range of projects covering various marketing channels and initiatives for the US and EU markets. From large scale production and localisation to creative strategy, concepting and implementation for multi-channel campaigns, I’ve done it all. I worked alongside a team of copywriters, developers and marketers across global offices.
‘Cellphone to Condo in a Click’
On-site Display Banners
We were tasked to create on-site display banners to promote awareness and increase downloads of the Vrbo App.
With two types of illustration style, we produced a series of display banners that stand out on the page.
‘By the Time’
Marketing Flywheel Campaign
‘By the Time’ was a concept born from a brief that asked us to increase bookings during our key booking period for summer beach holidays.
We decided to centre the campaign messaging around scarcity and urgency, to persuade the user to take immediate action. We used real data to state how many people were on the site finding their perfect beach house in the time it takes to read a sentence. By posing the question, “What if they book yours?”, we increased the sense of competition.
The campaign ran in Europe and the US.
‘Aka and Happy Place’
DoubleClick 360 | Display Advertising
This was a DV360 display advertising campaign. The ask was to run 20x creative tests based on audience insights from current prospecting campaigns.
All concepts had to be flexible and able to adapt to different interests and audience insights.
I produced two concepts. First ‘AKA’, with the concept statement: A Vrbo vacation home is so much more than just bricks and mortar. It’s a place where passions are fulfilled and memories are made.
The second concept was called ‘Happy Place’, with the concept statement: We all love being able to do our favourite things on vacation. All you need is a happy place in which to do so - a space where the magic can happen.
Both were created in animated format and have been running for a few months. Early results signal positive ROAS.
‘Where to Next?’
Creative Strategy for Retention Customers
‘Where to Next was’ an internal initiative, focused on re-engaging customers to book again. We thought to ourselves, what if you don’t actually know where you’d like to travel to next? And so the idea was born.
Organic, quality content is a good way to keep people engaged with a brand, so part of this initiative was to promote more organic content and become a lifestyle brand.
Our proposal was to develop an interactive, personalised and shareable tool called the ‘Where to Next Destination Generator’. The basis of the tool would be five simple questions from which we could then generate relevant, educational content to the user.
We developed a 3-stage strategy: 1. A feasibly test, 2. A low investment launch, and 3. The full-scale launch in awareness, engagement and booking channels. What we found the most exciting thing about this proposal was the endless channels this could work in, such on-site chatbots, Facebook Messenger, a landing page experience and - eventually - voice technology, like Alexa.
MumsNet Partnership
Creative Strategy & Partnership Campaign
The UK marketing team asked us to come up with concepts for a sweepstake partnership with MumsNet.
We created 2 concepts outlined in the concept deck below. One was called ‘Pick it, Win it, Love it’ the second was called ‘Happy Queen, Happy Kingdom’.
Paid & Organic Social Media
Creating relevant evergreen content for the organic social platform, to help build the brand into a lifestyle brand. We tested paid social ads with targeted messages and creative at all stages of the funnel. (i.e Awareness, Persuasion, Purchase and Retention)
Our brief was to increase customer retention through free channels. The hypothesis was that people who follow us on social media will have booked with the brand before.
We created a social media messaging framework based on our value props, which lead to concepts such as ‘getaways close to home’ and ‘reasons to travel’.
Email Communications
Vrbo’s typical customer is highly engaged with email, making this an important channel.
During my time at Vrbo, I worked on many email cycles. For a consistent brand look, and to be scalable globally, we developed these emails in a templated format. I worked with the in-house creative team as well as an external production agency, to produce well-designed emails at scale for the traveller market.
