Here’s the third iteration of Lucky Generals’ debut campaign for Premier Inn and it’s a mark of the massive interest – in UK adland anyway – in the Generals that people will look at it and go: so what?
The Generals specialise in fireworks which is one thing this campaign signally lacks. But Premier is one of the two pillars of the Whitbread empire (along with Costa) and Whitbread (or the Generals or both) have clearly come to the conclusion that Premier needs to promise more than a good night’s sleep, as it did for years with Lenny Henry.
So the message is that it’s a good place to start celebrations of various kinds – in this case an elderly relative’s birthday – so a destination as opposed to a facility. And they now boast restaurants with “assistants,” so it’s more like a hotel than a motel.
It’s the not the Chelsea Hotel or the Cipriani (or Hostelworld) but isn’t trying to be. Simply promises value in an un-shouty way.
Industry pundits probably won’t be very pleased but Whitbread probably will be.
MAA creative scale: 6.
