Comedy
Introduction
I didn’t grow up staying in nice hotels and I get a huge thrill traveling all over the world for work. It honestly seems ridiculous that I regularly get to experience 500-thread-count sheets, gel-infused memory foam, cucumber-infused water, monogrammed bathrobes, nightly turndown service, and a seemingly endless supply of roasted Marcona almonds. In truth, every time I approach the front desk to check in, I’m expecting the receptionist to realize that they’ve got the wrong guy. But nope. They’ve got exactly the right guy.
You’ve definitely tapped into something very true about human experience with this campaign—staying at a luxury hotel is literally the one time that being out of your depth is a purely good feeling. And there couldn’t a better time to share this insight; after spending much of the past year completely out of our depths in a not-good way (to put it mildly), let’s invite viewers to be overwhelmed by luxury at an affordable price. We’ve all spent the last ten months fantasizing about escaping our 200-square-foot living room/office/gym/playroom/dispensary (no judgement), and Hotwire is here to make the fantasy a reality.
Tone
I’d like to play these different scenarios pretty straight and allow M’s absurd antics speak for themselves. You mentioned on the call that it’s important that M’s behavior doesn’t push her too far into jerk territory, but I don’t think this will be a problem, especially not with M at the helm—she’s just so likeable that people will be on her side no matter what she does. Plus, by grounding these scenarios in a slightly exaggerated reality, viewers will immediately recognize her predicament and be sympathetic. The dog pawty with a painfully perky host, the beginner’s belt ceremony that is so cute but soooo mind-numbingly dull, the ladies’ night/divorce party in which middle-aged women are expected to celebrate their freedom with a bunch of sweaty twenty-somethings at a cheesy nightclub. If the audience relates to M—and they surely will—then they won’t just be sympathetic to her small acts of sabotage and her ridiculous excuses to stay in and sling. They’ll be cheering for them.
Ultimately, M’s absurdist antics will make her the perfect antihero for the homebody within all of us.