2025 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

With over 100 million downloads, Skyscanner is a global leader in travel planning, but in North America, they are still relatively unknown. To make some noise for the brand, they needed to create a moment worth talking about. And come April, there’s nothing creating a bigger buzz in North America than the NBA playoffs.

The challenge? Find a way for the little-known Skyscanner to generate brand awareness by joining the cultural conversation.

For 25 years, Cancun has been a well-known NBA joke signalling the end of someone’s season — their insight was to use this travel-related piece of NBA culture to connect with basketball fans across North America.

With no official partnership, they trolled NBA teams by turning a playoff meme into the most disruptive out-of-home campaign of the season.

They launched the campaign in round one of the NBA Playoffs, starting with the Dallas Mavericks vs the Los Angeles Clippers. As the series approached its conclusion, they decided to have some fun at the
Mavericks’ expense.

Playing into the well-known joke, they bought the 100-foot billboard outside Crypto.com Arena. No NBA logos, no players, just a simple, well-placed billboard: ‘Dallas to Cancun. For great flights to Cancun, visit Skyscanner.’ The billboard created such a massive splash that shortly before game time, they were asked to take down the billboard by the Clippers organization.

To follow that up, they brought the campaign directly to Canadians. With so many conversations centered around Canadian stars Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jamal Murray, they wanted to invite fans from their hometowns to travel to support their local heroes. In Shai’s hometown, fans were greeted with their own billboards: “Hamilton to Dallas”. In Jamal’s hometown, it was “Kitchener to Denver”.

Finally, to finish what they started, they officially welcomed Dallas, the last team to get eliminated from the NBA playoffs, to Cancun. The agency placed a giant billboard in the Cancun airport with the message “Welcome to Cancun, Dallas”. And for the NBA champion Boston Celtics, they placed billboards all along their championship parade saying ‘Boston to The White House’ — in reference to the longstanding tradition of the winning team going to visit the US President following their win.

The agency started by looking for big moments in culture that would help the brand stand out. In April, that’s the NBA Playoffs. After that, they had a bigger challenge: what connects travel and the NBA? With the first round of the playoffs coming to an end, the agency found a travel-related insight every fan would love — 1,2,3 Cancun. It started 25 years ago when L.A. Laker Nick Van Exel jokingly blurted out ‘1,2,3… Cancun! just before elimination. In the years since, the joke has steadily risen in notoriety, and Cancun has become a well-established meme in the NBA community. With that insight, they had their “in”.

To bring it to life, timing and location as everything. First, they had to react to the series in real time, without knowing the outcome. And second, OOH was strategically placed next to the pavilion where fans, media, and players gathered before the game. With a simple billboard, they started a conversation.

In the first 24 hours, the stunt drove over 1 billion media impressions and more than 3.5 million impressions on X (Twitter) — making it Skyscanner’s most successful ad ever. It blew up so much, the Clippers actually asked them to take it down.…but not before the campaign took on a life of its own. On social, fans from both sides made their own versions of the billboard. Dallas fans even showed up to the game with their own home-made versions of the ad. That same week, Skyscanner saw an 8% lift in travel searches in the US….all with no official sponsorship.

Because Skyscanner might not have an official connection to the NBA, but they know a thing or two about great flights.

Credits

Agency: Courage Inc
Dhaval Bhatt - Founder + CCO
Joel Holtby - Founder + CCO
Tom Kenny - Partner + CSO
Niki Sahni - Partner + President
Raul Garcia - Executive Creative Director
Derek Mollenhauer - Strategy Director
Zac Smith - Copywriter
Zeina Elshurafa - Art Director
Matt Miller: Associate Creative Director
Tommy Yong: Associate Creative Director
Kyron Sobers - Account Director
Tino Monk - Account Executive
Clair Galea - Executive Producer
Dan Rankin: Agency Producer
Marcus Barrie: Editor
Sunaina Arora: Post Producer

Client: Skyscanner
Andre Le Masurier - Sr Director, Global Head of Brand & Creative
Carla Sandhu - Global Head of Design Operations (Brand)
Peter Dickinson - Head of Motion
Andy Culbert - Designer
Gemma Jamieson - Senior Manager, Global PR & Communications
Johnny Moran - Global Social Media Manager
Ayoub El Mamoun - Global Social, Comms
James Rose - Principal Producer
Victoria Best - Senior Global Brand Marketing Manager

Production: Joswin Media
Joswin H. - Photographer
Julian Peter

Media: Rebel & Thorn
Kieran O'Beirne - Principal, Co-Founder
Nicole McCourt - Director, Client Success

PR: 5WPR
Lori Ruggiero – Executive Vice President
Chris Thatcher – Senior Vice President
Brenna Goodsitt – Associate Vice President
Oliva Gracey – Senior Account Executive
Amy Cai – Account Director
Alex Libutti – Senior Media Specialist