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Expedia, the world’s leading online travel agent, is launching its new European brand advertising campaign.  The campaign marks the start of a new era for the brand as it rolls out its Expedia Everywhere strategy.  Expedia Everywhere encompasses a series of transformational initiatives to deliver increasingly personalised travel services and redefine Expedia’s role as a trusted travel partner rather than simply a booking engine.   Expedia will bring to life this vision through a series of marketing initiatives that will be linked under the theme of People Shaped Travel.

The new advertising, devised by Ogilvy & Mather Advertising, is an integrated, multimedia campaign which will span TV, radio, print, online and social media across Europe.

Ogilvy and Mather has created a new print ad for Toblerone, the number one best-selling confectionery item for Father’s Day*, in support of one of the most important days in dads’ calendars.

The advertisement runs with the strapline, ‘Keep your dad happy this father’s day (He knows where the photos are)’. It features an eclectic line-up of snap-shots featuring off-spring wearing a variety of embarrassing clothes, expressions and hair dos that they would probably prefer to be kept secret – for ever.

The campaign launches on 18 June and will be supported on Toblerone’s Twitter and Facebook sites.

Sue Higgs, Copywriter and Andy Bird, Art Director at Ogilvy & Mather created the campaign.

Says Sue Higgs,  ‘‘This ad was great fun to work on.  Toblerone is a fantastically popular gift for Father’s Day and we wanted to endorse its popularity with an ad that will engage and amuse everybody who has a special dad who knows where the photos are!’

* Source: Nielsen 4 weeks to Father’s day 2010. Context is Pralines and Tablets >300g.

Europcar, the leader in car hire services in Europe for both leisure and business users, has  hit the TV screens with the launch of a new, unique, service for leisure travellers.  The multi-faceted above-the-line advertising campaign sees a high impact, humour-led television advertisement appear across peak time slots through the Summer, as well as feature high profile outdoor, tube and taxi poster advertising and integrated social media, e-marketing and PR activities.

The new service, freeDeliver, aims to give back time to customers by providing free delivery and collection to home addresses, and reflects Europcar’s market leading position as an innovator in delivering customer-service focused car hire.

The advertising campaign has been developed by Ogilvy & Mather and poses the question: “What would you do with the hour you save?” The TV spot features a regular guy (Jonathan Alden) busting out some killer dance moves all around his house, to the 1990’s club classic ‘Gonna Make you Sweat’ by C&C Music Factory. His energetic routine is interrupted by the Europcar freeDeliver driver ringing on the doorbell to drop off his hire car.

Firmly reinforcing Europcar’s position as number one in the European car hire marketplace, leisure travellers will be targeted on prime time television – including slots between Coronation Street and Britain’s Got Talent.  Complementing the TV activity is an intensive outdoor campaign to include key sites on the Underground, Rail stations and London taxis.

To reinforce the proposition with some fun and humorous responses, Ogilvy & Mather has also developed an innovative Twitter campaign to encourage people to participate and tweet a response in real time to #myextrahour. Rail digital screens will feature a panel showing the rolling tweets – the first time this has ever been done before in this medium.

Jez Groom is leaving The Engine Group to join O&M as Strategic Integration Director.

Groom will join O&M’s senior management team, reporting to Hugh Baillie, CEO and working closely with Rachel Hatton, Ogilvy Group Planning Director and Gerry Human, ECD.

He will be tasked with driving the effectiveness of O&M’s planning, providing strategic thinking and expertise across all areas of the business.

Groom will also work closely with the Group Vice-Chairman, Rory Sutherland, building upon the impressive Behavioural Economics agenda that Rory has championed for the last two years.

 Hugh Baillie said: “I have known Jez for nearly 15 years now and I’m delighted to be working with him again. He brings a unique perspective to the strategic challenges we face around creative work and he does it in a way that will fit well here.  He just gets things done.”

Groom spent 13 years working at agencies such as Bartle Bogle Hegarty and Starcom before founding the communications planning agency Edwards Groom Saunders, which was acquired by Engine in 2009.  At Engine, he was a key member of the agency’s integrated strategy and planning unit.  He also pioneered Engine’s behavioural economics and cognitive psychology proposition.

At Starcom and BBH he worked on brands including Barclays, Cadburys, Porsche, Boddingtons and Stella Artois.

Jez Groom says of his new role: “O&M is simply one of those agencies I’ve always wanted to work at, and especially right now. I am really excited at the opportunity to work with such revered industry thinkers as Rachel and Rory and want to drive Ogilvy’s leadership positioning in Planning.”

Groom joins O&M later in the year.