20 March 2024

Our pick for March 2024 is this witty reinvention of the hotel morning wakeup call.

If you’re an entrepreneur or in business in South Africa, a lot can keep you awake at night: the state of the economy, diminishing markets, the damn awful politics but mostly the poverty and unemployment. However, TBWA\ Hunt Lascaris has reinvented the morning wakeup call by transforming this hotel stereotype into a series of wry, and oh-so-clever evening tales that will lull you to sleep and put a smile on your dial.

If you check into City Lodge these days, you get a nighttime bookmark (because reading is a real win for insomnia). On the bookmark is a QR code that you access with your cellphone, and Bob’s your aunty — you can drift away to one of nine beautifully crafted stories. Or you can access the stories through an online site.

“What was cool about this project—and that doesn’t often happen—is that we treated it like a writer’s room. We invited many different personalities to the table and the outcome is just wonderfully rich. The collaboration on this project helped and our team on this was massive, from writers to designers to programmers. It was just a huge undertaking,” says Steph van Niekerk, TBWA\ Hunt Lascaris ECD, in a call with MarkLives and Shane Forbes, another Hunts ECD.

Thanks to the teamwork, City Lodge was able to get inventive and launch Bedtime Stories for Business People, a series of humorous audio tales that will lull even the most anxious entrepreneurial travellers to sleep. Harvard Business Review reports that 75% of business people who travel away from home experience high stress and 25% don’t sleep well when they’re away. This is why the agency’s created the series for City Lodge, aimed at classic office archetypes, with Brendan Jack, TBWA\ South Africa creative director and voiceover artist, doing the great voice set to a ‘white-collar noise’ soundtrack.

Listen to Bedtime Stories for Business People on YouTube

“As Steph said, the team was big and we’d try to find a boardroom and everyone would bring their jokes or whatever assignment we’d given them. I would always play this library music I found which is very quiet and relaxing. We’d make the team read their copy to this,” says Forbes. “One morning, everyone was in a bit of a mood because of something we had to deal with. We started the music and reading, and Steph was like: ‘This works!’ In no time we were chilled and optimistic.”

“I promise you that there were times when we were stressed and grumpy coming in for the reviews, and we all left much better human beings. Yes, the signature City Lodge brand humour is there and this is a funny take on the trials and tribulations of business personas, but it does relax you. It is so effective. It puts you to bed. But I must say it was quite a challenge to mash comedy writing with meditation,” adds Van Niekerk.

What also worked was the tight relationship that TBWA\ Hunt Lascaris enjoys with City Lodge. “We are so lucky with our clients,” she continues, “because they were completely understanding and, while there was some time pressure, of course, we could take our time to craft the stories. It took a while to do, and we rarely have the luxury of doing this.”

The TBWA\ Hunt Lascaris team working on the City Lodge Hotels campaign. Supplied.

“Spending time on craft makes a massive difference — that, and the amazingly passionate people,” says Forbes. “And we had so many folks from the team who wanted in. I guess when you walk past the boardroom and you see 10 people laughing their heads off and falling about you want to get involved. We put in hour after hour to ensure the design looked good and was user-friendly. The design follows a breathing motion that is slow and steady. Everything about the campaign is gentle.”

The time spent on the craft is evident, and this campaign is so cleverly integrated in that it’s part of the product. Plus it underscores the brand message, that business travel is hard — but City Lodge makes it easy.

Brand South Africa is the official reputation management agency of our beautiful country. This is why we are always on the lookout for creative talent that puts South Africa in the limelight. We believe that City Lodge Hotels and TBWA\ Hunt Lascaris have done precisely that, with their fun-spirited and highly engaging Bedtime Stories for Business People advertising campaign. We congratulate the two for showing us that even grownup business people need a good bedtime story every once in a while. Adding some delightful, yet soothing, humour to a long business day clearly makes you the well-deserved recipients of this month’s award.

Ad of the Month

#AdOfTheMonth, as selected by the editors and readers of MarkLives, celebrates great South African ads. NEW: Join our #ReadersChoice panel! Submit your work for #EditorsChoice consideration if you’re involved in making ads that are smart, funny and/or engaging. Charles Mathews is a contributing writer to MarkLives and MarkLives MEDIA.

https://www.marklives.com/article/43119-adofthemonth-hunts-city-lodge-make-bedtime-easy