HomeAway

Cultural Systems

Bring Back the Griswolds

A challenger launch platform that brought back the Griswolds to make the hotel-versus-vacation-rental contrast instantly legible. The campaign used Super Bowl XLIV as the ignition point, then extended into a short film, microsite, interactive game, social presence, and digital banners.

Role •

Sr. Interactive Art Director

Year •

2010

500%+

Traffic increase

~1M

Post-air site response

Effie Gold

Effectiveness award

One Show

Branded entertainment recognition

The Problem

HomeAway was still a newer name to many Americans, competing against hotels with far larger budgets.

The problem was not simply awareness. The brand needed people to understand the vacation-rental difference quickly, emotionally, and at national scale.

Hotels were familiar. Vacation rentals required a behavioral shift. The work had to make that shift feel obvious: hotels create cramped, frustrating, impersonal vacation moments; a rental gives the family room to actually have the vacation they imagined.

The campaign needed to make a challenger category legible in one high-pressure moment, then give people enough story and interaction to keep exploring after the spot aired.

The Idea

Bring back the Griswolds to dramatize “hotel hell” versus vacation-rental freedom.

The Griswolds gave the campaign an instantly understood family-vacation language. Instead of explaining the category rationally, the work borrowed a cultural truth people already recognized: vacations can go wrong fast when the lodging experience fails the family.

The Super Bowl spot acted as the trailer. The larger campaign gave people the rest of the story through the short film, microsite, game, social presence, and interactive extensions.

Case Study

The Execution

The campaign was built as an integrated entertainment system: broadcast attention, extended story, interactive participation, social ignition, and digital conversion working together.

Super Bowl ignition

A trailer-style Super Bowl spot brought Clark and Ellen Griswold back into culture and used the broadcast moment to point viewers toward the full digital experience.

Social character presence

Clark Griswold’s social presence created pre-air momentum and gave the campaign an owned character channel before the Super Bowl moment.

Extended story world

A short film continued the campaign beyond the paid spot, giving the audience more entertainment and more time with the HomeAway premise.

Digital campaign system

Banners, site assets, and interactive elements carried the same hotel-versus-vacation-rental contrast across the broader digital ecosystem.

Interactive experience

The microsite and “Griswold Getaway” game gave people a participatory way into the campaign, extending the idea beyond passive viewing.

Super Bowl ignition

A trailer-style Super Bowl spot brought Clark and Ellen Griswold back into culture and used the broadcast moment to point viewers toward the full digital experience.

Interactive experience

The microsite and “Griswold Getaway” game gave people a participatory way into the campaign, extending the idea beyond passive viewing.

Digital campaign system

Banners, site assets, and interactive elements carried the same hotel-versus-vacation-rental contrast across the broader digital ecosystem.

Extended story world

A short film continued the campaign beyond the paid spot, giving the audience more entertainment and more time with the HomeAway premise.

Social character presence

Clark Griswold’s social presence created pre-air momentum and gave the campaign an owned character channel before the Super Bowl moment.

Super Bowl ignition

A trailer-style Super Bowl spot brought Clark and Ellen Griswold back into culture and used the broadcast moment to point viewers toward the full digital experience.

Extended story world

A short film continued the campaign beyond the paid spot, giving the audience more entertainment and more time with the HomeAway premise.

Interactive experience

The microsite and “Griswold Getaway” game gave people a participatory way into the campaign, extending the idea beyond passive viewing.

Social character presence

Clark Griswold’s social presence created pre-air momentum and gave the campaign an owned character channel before the Super Bowl moment.

Digital campaign system

Banners, site assets, and interactive elements carried the same hotel-versus-vacation-rental contrast across the broader digital ecosystem.

Systems In Use

The work had to make a challenger category instantly legible, respect a beloved entertainment property, and hold together across broadcast, film, web, game, social, and banners.

Super Bowl spot

The broadcast spot worked like a trailer: a fast, recognizable reintroduction of Clark and Ellen Griswold that made the hotel-versus-vacation-rental contrast immediately legible.

Short film

The extended film gave the campaign more room to entertain, turning the Super Bowl moment into a deeper story rather than a single paid-media impression.

Griswold Getaway game

The interactive game translated the campaign into participation, giving people a way to play inside the hotel-hell premise instead of only watching it.

Campaign site

The microsite became the central hub, connecting the spot, short film, game, and HomeAway proposition into one navigable digital experience.

Social & banners

Character-led social and digital banners extended the campaign before and after the Super Bowl, carrying the same story logic into smaller, repeatable placements.

Short film

The extended film gave the campaign more room to entertain, turning the Super Bowl moment into a deeper story rather than a single paid-media impression.

Campaign site

The microsite became the central hub, connecting the spot, short film, game, and HomeAway proposition into one navigable digital experience.

Griswold Getaway game

The interactive game translated the campaign into participation, giving people a way to play inside the hotel-hell premise instead of only watching it.

Social & banners

Character-led social and digital banners extended the campaign before and after the Super Bowl, carrying the same story logic into smaller, repeatable placements.

Constraints Navigated

The work had to make a challenger category instantly legible, respect a beloved entertainment property, and hold together across broadcast, film, web, game, social, and banners.

Challenger scale

The brand had to introduce a less familiar category alternative in a national media environment dominated by larger, better-known travel and hospitality behaviors.

Integrated consistency

The platform had to stay coherent across spot, short film, microsite, game, banners, and social without feeling like disconnected campaign parts.

IP expectation

Using the Griswolds created instant recognition, but also required the campaign to honor the tone, character logic, and comedic expectations people already associated with Vacation.

Build and delivery pressure

The interactive pieces required design, development, QA, iteration, and polish under the timing pressure of a national launch window.

Super Bowl compression

The idea had to land in seconds on broadcast, then sustain attention through deeper digital experiences after the ad aired.

Challenger scale

The brand had to introduce a less familiar category alternative in a national media environment dominated by larger, better-known travel and hospitality behaviors.

Super Bowl compression

The idea had to land in seconds on broadcast, then sustain attention through deeper digital experiences after the ad aired.

Build and delivery pressure

The interactive pieces required design, development, QA, iteration, and polish under the timing pressure of a national launch window.

IP expectation

Using the Griswolds created instant recognition, but also required the campaign to honor the tone, character logic, and comedic expectations people already associated with Vacation.

Integrated consistency

The platform had to stay coherent across spot, short film, microsite, game, banners, and social without feeling like disconnected campaign parts.

Challenger scale

The brand had to introduce a less familiar category alternative in a national media environment dominated by larger, better-known travel and hospitality behaviors.

IP expectation

Using the Griswolds created instant recognition, but also required the campaign to honor the tone, character logic, and comedic expectations people already associated with Vacation.

Super Bowl compression

The idea had to land in seconds on broadcast, then sustain attention through deeper digital experiences after the ad aired.

Integrated consistency

The platform had to stay coherent across spot, short film, microsite, game, banners, and social without feeling like disconnected campaign parts.

Build and delivery pressure

The interactive pieces required design, development, QA, iteration, and polish under the timing pressure of a national launch window.

What It Demonstrates Now

This case shows how a campaign can use culture as infrastructure.

The strongest part is not simply that the work used a famous property. It is that the property became a system for explaining a challenger behavior: why a vacation rental could solve a problem hotels could not.

That is directly relevant to your current positioning. It demonstrates strategic narrative, interaction design, cultural translation, and cross-channel system thinking under high public scrutiny.

Featured coverage

Chief Marketer — HomeAway.com Super Bowl Campaign Plays Out beyond End Zone

Entrepreneur — HomeAway’s Super Bowl Ad Game

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