COURTYARD BY MARRIOTT | Never Underestimate the Importance of a Good Night's Rest | 1998
Not Enough Sleep Can Ruin Everything / COURTYARD BY MARRIOTT "Missed Cue"
Ever had the most embarrassing moment of your life because you didn't get enough sleep? In 1998, Courtyard zeroed right in on that.
The problem
In 1998, the mid-price hotel market was a fierce battleground. Hilton, Holiday Inn and others were piling in, and Marriott needed a way to set its more than 300 Courtyard properties apart. Up to that point, its advertising had mostly been print and radio, but this was the year it started putting real effort into TV.
The insight
Instead of selling "a hotel where you can sleep well," they showed "the moment lack of sleep wrecks your life." They simply attached the product benefit to a fear almost everyone has felt at some point. USA Today described it as something "anyone who has ever suffered from sleep deprivation can relate to."
The idea
The five spots show people spectacularly messing up at work. The one that won Gold, "Missed Cue," follows a man who loses all sense of direction on his way to give a speech. Another shows a man who gets lost behind a stage curtain and ends up stranded in front of a huge audience. The footage was deliberately shot to look as rough as home video, copying the low-quality look of breaking news footage on CNN. The closing tagline: "Never underestimate the importance of a good night's rest."
What happened
USA Today and Advertising Age named it one of the best campaigns of 1998, and it also won an ANDY Award. "Missed Cue" took home a Gold Lion at Cannes. The ads ran in high-profile slots like NFL broadcasts, helping spread the buzz. Right after the campaign aired, Marriott's quarterly profit rose 16%.
Afterthought
I love how rough and unpolished this is. While everyone else in the 90s was selling shiny visions of the future, Courtyard looked straight at a very human weakness—not getting enough sleep—and showed it using footage that looked like real accident coverage. That honesty turned into a Gold Lion at Cannes. What the ad was really selling wasn't magic, but a way not to fail.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Gold 1998
