Choice Hotels 2024 Ad Blitz: A Mix of Celebrity and Digital Innovation

08.01.2024 - 18:02 / skift.com / Sean Oneill

Choice Hotels is about to begin a year-long U.S. marketing campaign to raise awareness for its brands. Ads will air on linear and streaming TV and platforms like Spotify as part of a multi-million dollar effort.

Choice Hotels, founded in 1939, has for decades used traditional broadcast and outdoor billboard advertising to raise brand awareness.

But the company’s chief marketing officer, Noha Abdalla, has been refining the company’s operational model to more efficiently raise brand awareness with new digital tools and platforms. Besides TV, the group is experimenting with digital-video ads and podcast placements, which are cheaper than traditional TV spots and aim to be more efficient at targeting relevant demographic groups.

Choice Hotels faces a challenge as it seeks to pitch four major brands — Radisson, Cambria Hotels, Comfort, and Quality Inn — while also alluding to 18 other brands. That’s a lot of information to convey concisely.

The hotel franchisor in 2019 hired McKinney as its lead creative agency. McKinney faced a decision of telling a story about the brands or about the hotel guests.

It chose to spotlight the guests with an “Our Business Is You” campaign that showed ordinary people picking Choice brands for various needs, such as business trips and family vacations.

“We want to help change people’s perceptions of the Choice group brand that has historically been mostly known for economy and midscale brands,” Abdalla said.

“In the last five years or so, we’ve really expanded into both extended stay and upscale, especially with the acquisition of Radisson,” Abdalla said. “So what we’re looking to do with this multi-channel campaign is to help change people’s perceptions and really show them that we have a really wide range of hotel brands that can fit anybody’s needs, no matter what their travel occasion.”

In 2024, Choice Hotels has taken a different approach by essentially hiring a brand ambassador. It will feature Keegan-Michael Key — who won an Emmy for his work in a Comedy Central series — in a set of six spots.

“The use of a celebrity like Key will help us break through in emerging channels like TikTok,” Abdalla said. “With a 30-second TV ad, you can tell a pretty thorough story, but on TikTok, you may have 7 seconds at most, so the objective is to get someone’s attention to help echo and amplify messaging elsewhere.”

“Key is a really funny guy who is instantly recognizable and that helps break through the noise of a social platform,” Abdalla said. “Say you’re on TikTok and you see Kee sitting in a hotel and you’re wondering what’s going on. The creative may be either just highlighting one value proposition of a brand, like the free breakfast, or it may just be something over the top