Momondo: Momondo / The Dna Journey [alternative version]

Credits & Description:

Agency: & Co. Copenhagen, Denmark
Client: Momondo
Product: Momondo
Entrant: & Co. Copenhagen, Denmark
Title: Momondo / The Dna Journey
Product/Service: Momondo
Idea Creation: & Co. Copenhagen, Denmark
Production: Noa / &Co Copenhagen, Denmark
Creative Director: Robert Cerkez (NoA / &Co.)
Senior Copywriter: Tue Rossel (NoA / &Co.)
Senior Copywriter: James Godfrey (Freelancer)
Director: Jeppe Rønde (Bacon, Copenhagen)
Art Director: Kristoffer Winther Sørensen (NoA / &Co.)
Art Director: Ole Hoffmann (NoA / &Co.)
The Campaign
PROBLEM
The travel search-engine momondo wants people to explore the world with an open mind. But that’s easier said than done, when a recent global study shows that 48% think that we have become less tolerant towards other cultures.
SOLUTION
momondo came up with a completely new way of travelling – The DNA Journey, where you don’t get to decide the destination. Your DNA does.
We invited people from all over the world to talk about their nationality – on how they see themselves and others. Then we invited them to take a DNA test that shows where their ancestors are from, 500-2000 years back. The often surprising results made people realize that they have more in common with the world than they thought.
The viewers of the filmed event were invited to take a test with the chance to win a DNA Journey to all places in their ancestry.
Campaign Success
The campaign was divided into one main movie and six individual portrait films. They were launched continually over the cause of two months from June 2nd on three media channels: Youtube, Facebook and a campaign website. Even though the films are available without an end-date, a loosely campaign period is from June 2nd 2016 to ultimo September 2016, where a winner of the DNA Journey is found.
Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results
175 million views
4.4 billion media impressions
8.3 million engagements
380 million in total reach
170.000 sign-ups for DNA Journey competition
Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service
The travel search engine momondo wants people to travel with an open mind. So they launched a totally new way of travelling: The DNA Journey, where you don’t decide the destination. Your DNA does.
In a global activation campaign, a viral film was in fact an invitation to sign up to win a DNA Kit, a personal DNA world map and eventually a personal DNA Journey.
More than 2 million people visited the campaign site and 170.000 people signed up and made the effort to write personal reasons for why they should win.
Momondo is a global travel search engine, but also a brand with a purpose; to fight against the boundaries, prejudices and comfort zones that continue to separate people and cultures throughout the world. Everyone is in our target group.
Yet, even tough people travel more and people believe traveling make them more tolerant, prejudice and intolerance is on the rise. To change this, we needed to:
1. Re-estsblish the true value of traveling
2. Make the topic personal and engaging
3. Generate global impact with a limited budget
Execution:
We worked with 17 PR agencies, a seeding agency, in-house PR and social media teams to manage media relations and social conversations in 20 languages to spark the virality of the campaign. The execution of the campaign was divided into three phrases; the tease phase, the launch phase, and the on-going phase. In the tease phase we used stats from our global survey to prime the media conversation with two stories: One that revealed travel as a driver for interpersonal trust, and one about the curiosity to travel according to one’s ancestry. These two news angles were turned into 24 localized stories, which together with the video launch story totaled 39 local press releases. This helped us set the scene in earned and owned media for the launch phase starting on June 2nd 2016 and the on-going phase with deep-dive stories about the participants in the film.
Campaign Description:
To combat prejudice is a serious and large issue. Instead of focusing on the social macro level, we therefore changed perspective to a personal micro-level, to make the issue personal and contemporary. Rather than fighting prejudice, the idea was to pay tribute to diversity and focus on what unites us. We all have a basic need for respect and a sense of belonging, and all people, even the best, has prejudices. Thus, we interviewed 67 people about their prejudices towards other people and invited them to take a DNA test to discover the ancestral diversity within themselves. 16 of these people were portrayed in the film ‘momondo – The DNA Journey’. As part of the DNA Journey, momondo engaged people around the world by offering the possibility to win a DNA test and a chance to win a journey to the countries found in their own DNA.
Synopsis:
momondo was founded in 2006 on a vision of opening our world through travel - that travel can break down boundaries between people. The travel industry is incredibly competitive, so it was key for momondo to stand out. Combining this business goal with the vision, the time was right to start a global conversation, a movement, about how much we have in common. There are many today (48 percent according to a survey conducted to spearhead the campaign) who believe intolerance is on the rise, creating prejudice between people around the world. momondo therefore set out to make an attempt to break down not only physical borders, but also the mental boundaries that separate people. momondo have a vision of a world where our differences are a source of inspiration and development, not intolerance and prejudice, and our objective was to show that there are more things uniting us than is dividing us.
Outcome:
Globally, 1133 articles (over 67 countries) about The DNA Journey totaling 8.43 billion media impressions. We got coverage in a variety of our identified top media such as Today, CNN, Oprah, Huffington Post, Adweek, Aplus etc. with an estimated AVE of 15 million EUR*The coverage was very positive and consisted of a mix of stories of the main film’s viral success as well as positive reporting on the emotional content of the video and momondo’s purpose. This was supplied by a wide variety of trade media thought leadership reporting on the social engagement success of the campaign films and how a company can create a viral success.The engagement with our campaign was a true viral success, far eclipsing any previous viral campaigns in the travel industry.The DNA Journey film has to date generated a stunning 394 million views (98 % organic) across Facebook, YouTube and our site letsopenourworld.com driving 13.8 million engagements. The film was shared organically with many Facebook users quoting it as an antidote to prejudice, global conflict and political turmoil and as an example of how much we as humans have in common.Even though our campaign was designed as a brand builder, we saw a significant uplift in traffic in the days after the campaign with global traffic to our site increasing 45 and 43 percent in the two days immediately after the campaign launch. Moreover, momondo’s global market share increased by 2 percent as a direct result of the campaign.
Strategy:
The DNA Journey aimed to target individuals from the whole world, and the challenge was to create a global debate - not just a campaign. For this, targeting the right media played a crucial role. A strong emphasis was put on earned media and the majority of the budget was spent on developing content, PR, social activation as well as influencers to help spread the message.The PR strategy was 7-fold, focusing on 1) media relations, 2) a global survey looking at the correlation between travel, trust, and openness, 3) three news angles developed for three campaign phases, 4) advertorials, 5) seeding, 6) meta-PR and 7) bloggers and influencers. Each of the strategic elements were intended to ensure a continued push of fresh content that could help maintain media interest, spark the conversation and put our vision of a more open world on the agenda throughout the campaign period.
Relevancy:
The success of momondo’s DNA Journey campaign can be attributed to the role of PR: Combining data-based insights about momondo’s brand purpose with the runaway viral success of an emotionally engaging piece of content, we were able to execute an exceptional PR dimension to the campaign. By careful strategic planning on a global scale and a flexible approach on a local level, we generated billions of media impressions and a genuine positive brand buzz that reached the goal of differentiating momondo in an extremely competitive industry.

Facebook Awards 2017 Campaign Goals:
- Brand Awareness
- Reach
- Engagement
- Video Views
Facebook Products Used:
- Video Ad
- Website custom audiences
- Lookalike audiences
- Conversion tracking
- Video re-marketing