• by Karl Greenberg , July 13, 2009

Holiday Inn is launching phase two of its largest ad push ever, with two new TV spots following a raft of TV, print, online and billboard ads that launched this spring. The effort features a new media strategy that the company says includes local markets, "ownable" properties, and reinforcing to hotel owners the importance of the Holiday Inn global re-launch. And the company is also instituting its first logo redesign in half a century.

One of the two new ads by N.Y.'s McCann Erickson has a NASCAR pit crew entering a Holiday Inn hotel room, and updating design and technology elements with the feverish alacrity of a mid-race tire change. They strip mattresses, sheets, pillows, change out the TV for a flat-panel, towels, shower hardware, curtains, and rods, among other things. Another spot has a Major League Baseball grounds-maintenance team also doing a room makeover. They leave just as a guest enters the room.

The company says it did a soft-launch in late June with a new website that reflects the modernized hotel themes and is meant to expedite online booking.

John Merkin, SVP of brand management at the Atlanta-based Holiday Inn Brands, says the company moved to upgrade based partly on research it commissioned in 2005, involving some 18,000 guests. "It was an opportunity for Holiday Inn to make sure we were relevant and modern for next 50 years."

He says changes started with signage. "We hadn't changed the signage in 25 years and the logo in 50." He says changes are both inside rooms and outside. In-room changes include top of bed, and pillow selection. "We have tagged those with 'firm' and 'soft' pillows, for example. In bathrooms, we put in brand new curtains with curved rods and more amenities, and we upgraded the towels."

Merkin says Holiday Inn's relationship with MLB is four years old, and that both NASCAR and MLB index well for both Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express. The the purpose the ads is to appeal to both business and leisure travelers. "The great thing about Holiday Inn is we are a seven-day-week hotel; we appeal to both leisure and business, while many of the competition focus on or the other," he says.

The company says it has already redesigned -- inside and out -- some 1,000 hotels worldwide with all properties to be redesigned at some point next year. The company is adding 400 new hotels worldwide this year, between its Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express properties, and more than 1000 between the two brands within next three to four years.