BRAND & DESIGN SYSTEM
Brief
A problem common to most online holiday booking services is that the focus is firmly on commerce and brand tends to be underserved.
Expedia had identified this problem as one that led to a lack of standout in a cluttered marketplace. In a sector that is very personal and emotionally driven for the consumer, strengthening the brand and offering personalised comms was a space in which Expedia could differentiate.
They asked us to create a semi-automated design system that would allow their in-house team to generate multiple iterations of their digital display ads creating messaging that was more finely targeted and appealed to the consumer passion points while strengthening the brand presence and differentiation. The system was to be data driven and future proofed for dynamic creative optimisation.
Solution
Expedia had a ton of data on their consumer’s behaviour, passion points and decision making process. However they had not yet turned that data into a suite of consumer profiles. They also had a strong offering in being the only online holiday booking service with which consumers could organise the entire holiday from flights & hotels to care hire & activity but had not yet placed that offering at the core of their brand.
Our first step was to devise and run a workshop to develop detailed consumer personas using Expedia’s 1st party dat and to define brand tonality.
The results of that workshop allowed us to develop brand tonality, art direction principles and a design system designed to portray Expedia as a brand that understood and appreciated consumer’s varied travel tastes and would empower them to create new memories to share no matter what their aspirations.
Based on a grid system inspired by the Expedia Logo, the design template was easy to use and generate display ads in multiple formats and messaging iterations quickly.
