Holiday inn express site is first child of digitas' third act

This year's iteration of "The Smart Show," described as a Web site "showcasing the oddity, challenges and occasional charms of concern travel," is more focused than last year's, said Digitas Creative manager Ben Jones. "Last year, basically we had no idea what we were doing," he acknowledged. "We were inventing it as we went along."

Jones said the first political campaign was reasonably successful. Those who saw it responded positively and brand metric function associated with it "jumped up," he said. Nevertheless, the first year of "The Smart Show" "didn't get the kind of reach we truly wanted," added Jones.

So, this year, Digitas focused on "shift the media scheme" a bit to get more statistical distribution and exposure. Jones said the company "re-allocated dollars away from show ads and into statistical distribution in a truly aggressive way." As part of that scheme, the federal agency struck a deal with TripAdvisor to integrate "The Smart Show" with the TripAdvisor site.

"Their theory was it's good content, not just ads," said Jones.

This year's campaign is to a great extent focused on attracting Holiday Inn expressage business travelers and trying to get them to spend additional days at the hotels, said Jones. Combine video and Web content with sponsorships and publicity, "The Smart Show" seeks to offer those travelers a to a great extent interactive experience.

For illustration, it will have a "Deal of the Week" characteristic that gives precedence Club wages points holders the opportunity to win prizes. Travel-themed blogs will be written by Andy Plesser of Beet.TV and Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV. Also new is an interactive feature called the The "Need-er-ator" which allows visitors to ask travel-related questions. Answers will be provided by others using the service and by The Smart Show team, which might create shows based on some of the questions, said Jones.

Additionally, a "Ultimate Road Warrior Challenge" game will let players earn Priority Club Rewards points and try to win a Pontiac Vibe by staying at Holiday Inn Express hotels.

Jones described The Third Act, based in New York, as the "production management arm of Digitas." The Third Act connected Digitas with Endemol USA, the producer of Deal or No Deal and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, to produce the new episodes.

"The Smart Show" will be shown twice a week through October, hosted by the blip.tv Internet TV network and distributed by blip.tv and Broadband Enterprises. The episodes will also be available on "The Smart Show" Web site.