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Behind the ‘Wotif Great Summer Escape’ campaign: with Shelley Davis
Brand Integration Manager, Shelley Davis, is a part of the Wotif Brand Marketing team, based in the Sydney, Australia, office, having joined Expedia Group in 2021. Shelley truly enjoys the opportunity in her role to creatively showcase Wotif‘s trademark fun and playful personality, to inspire travellers to dream, plan, and book unforgettable vacations.
Expedia Group’s culture has been key to Shelley’s positive experience by offering the type of flexible working, and employee well-being policies, needed to ensure a strong work-life balance, and output, by being trusted to do the job well. This, in particular, came into focus recently when Shelley had the chance to be a part of one of her favourite projects yet, the ‘Wotif Great Summer Escape’.
Shelley Davis, Brand Integration Manager, Sydney, Australia
Career Check-in
Tell us about your team.
Wotif Brand Marketing is powered by a lean team of three. We operate a little differently to other teams in our division by covering a mix of brand, creative, and media functions. We’ve recently picked up New Zealand media for Brand Expedia, and BaB as well. It has its challenges, but we have a tight team culture and enjoy being able to flex in different ways. I have huge respect for these ladies in my team.
As a focus brand in Australia, alongside Brand Expedia and Stayz (Vrbo), distinction is key. With its strength in lodging, Wotif owns the accommodation-led competitive space in domestic travel. Our main priorities are maintaining our position as the local authority, showing Aussie travellers we know them best, and making Wotif synonymous with Aussie travel – Wotif, it’s Aussie for travel!
Tell us about your role
While we all support brand integration, my focus area is creative lead and partnerships. In a nutshell, my role is to make sure our creative is on point and on brand, with the right message, for the right channel and audience. I love it. I get to work closely with our Brand Director, Media Manager and agency team; I spend a lot of time working with the creative agency to shape our brand campaign work and now DC assets. As a major sponsor in the National Rugby League (NRL), I get to connect South Sydney Rabbitohs fans with the brand each season, which is great. My creative background also comes in handy when we’re in a pinch with resource availability.
Life at Expedia Group Sydney
The Sydney office is in a prime location. In a city as spread out as it is, being in the Central Business District, near public transport, is like gold. We’re surrounded by beautiful architecture, arts venues, hospitality, shopping, and more – perfect for a cheeky cocktail to wrap up the week.
The ‘new’ EG Sydney is coming into its own now and there’s a great vibe. We recently moved everyone to work on one level. You get to see more facets of the business in action and learn more about different roles just on the walk to grab a coffee. I’ll be honest, Marketing & Traveller Ops is a chattier section of the office, but everyone is welcome!
Being on Expedia Group Australia’s RAP Working Group (Reconciliation Action Plan) feeds one of my passions and has connected me with amazing Expedians I wouldn’t normally cross paths with. We get to work on all kinds of social impact initiatives outside of our normal roles to support and celebrate Indigenous tourism and the First Peoples of what is now known as Australia.
Featured project: Wotif Great Summer Escape
Tell us about the project.
Despite a lot of hurdles, this is one of my favourite projects to date. It often ends up that way! The Wotif Great Summer Escape was a high impact media buy, modelled on a pop-up escape room with multi-sensory elements to create a unique immersive experience.
It was part of an integrated campaign for our creative platform “You’re only a Wotif away”, helping travellers to dream, plan and book ahead in the lead up to spring and summer. The platform taps into Australia’s larrakin spirit and positions Wotif as the ‘portal to possibilities’ in Aussie travel – we make it easier for everyday Aussies to say, why not! and explore more of Oz.
Set in a Wes Andersen-esque hotel setting, potential travellers competed to unlock their ‘Great Summer Escape’ while being transported to Australia’s breath-taking rainforests, beaches and dazzling coral reefs for inspiration. For every challenge solved within a time limit, participants earned a token for a chance to win a $5,000AUD Wotif travel credit.
What was your role in this activation?
A few media options were pitched, but once I saw the escape room idea, I thought it would be a perfect fit for the platform. Working closely with the team, I represented for client-side on the project and led creative discussions with the activation agency and creative agency on consumer journey, concepts, design, challenges, production and social support.
What was your favourite part of the project?
So many! Hearing everyone in the office compare their scores and go back again to try for better. Seeing the big Wotif green container and the giant ESCAPE letters from blocks away for the first time. The big reveal of our incredible hotel interior. Our fantastic brand ambassadors taking care of the crowd and sharing on the ground feedback. Oh the rooftop pool! We made sure workers in the surrounding high-rise buildings had a taste too with a crisp blue pool and inflatable lilo on top of the container emulating a piece of OOH creative in market at the time. It was such a fantastic collaborative experience.
What is it like to work in a team that explores creative ways to engage people with travel?
Incredible. Everyone brings a unique perspective with their own strengths, but most of all empathy. We love getting into our traveller’s minds and finding ways to connect and do better work. Wotif’s trademark personality means we get to build emotive connections through humour and playfulness in our creative. It’s fun! I’m very lucky to work alongside such intelligent people.
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