Missing the obvious with Captain Obvious.

When a brand doesn’t carry the campaign through each customer touchpoint it can be an obvious missed opportunity.

Something I’ve seen many times over the years is when a brand overlooks an obvious opportunity to reinforce a campaign concept in multiple media outlets. I’ve been noticing that the Captain Obvious campaign for hotels.com has allowed this to happen. This very clever character in a well produced television campaign has not been carried over into other media. Why not? When people start to connect with a character and recognize its look and language they may not be making the connection to who they represent. We’ve all done that, we remember the commercial but not who it is for. So it’s important to keep connecting the character with the brand. That’s also how you can measure the effectiveness and success of the campaign by how that character connects and drives traffic for the brand. 

So Captain Obvious made his debut in television and right away the character name, the look and the personality were engaging and funny. He easily should have become an iconic character for the brand, but in the subsequent media like email, social media and on the web site itself he was missing. Which, to me, was a missed opportunity to keep customers connected with him and with hotels.com. 

So, how does this happen? Most times it’s due to the fragmenting of the marketing efforts between multiple vendors. Each specialize in their field and delivering on their promise, but most times they get left out of the campaign loop. They know the base brand standards but they miss out on brand campaigns, especially when a new character is being introduced and with no data to show that character’s success it’s hard to ask each vendor to update their efforts to include the new creative. So, while we wait for the results of the success of the character the customer may be struggling to remember who the character was promoting. Even though they may already be receiving messages from the brand, they’re just not making the connection yet. So, in my opinion, that’s a missed opportunity. 

Understandably, having each vendor make these campaign changes costs money. It’s not an inexpensive venture, and it’s not just the design and implementation time, there are compensation costs to the talent who is playing the part of Captain Obvious. Putting him into all the various media probably goes beyond his original usage contract, now there are talent fees over and above the original television contract. Talent contracts and negotiations are tricky as well, trying to determine if you will use that character image beyond the commercial, what mediums, for how long? Just the answers to these questions can push a budget well beyond the original estimates.

Of course, these same issues of not carrying a campaign into other media can happen in an in-house marketing situation as well. Departments within marketing working independently may find themselves not knowing the big picture of a campaign effort. That’s why it’s important for departments to communicate, not just within marketing but other departments as well. Any department that involves a customer touchpoint and an opportunity to make the connection of character to customer and the brand should be brought into the loop of major campaign efforts.

But, all is not lost. On my most recent hotels.com visit I noticed that Captain Obvious has made it to the home page. It doesn’t take a lot to make that connection. He could appear deeper in the site as well, but at least his presence on the home page tells me as a customer that I found the site connected to Captain Obvious. But I still haven’t seen him in any email promotions. Once again, seems an obvious place to have him appear. I always remember my high school drama teacher who said, “avoid the obvious” well, seems in some ways hotels.com thinks the same thing when it comes to Captain Obvious.