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Brian Sharples, CEO of HomeAway, Inc., Hijacks Christine's Blog!

Hi everyone,

To start, let me thank Christine for allowing me to take over her blog this week. I thought it would be a great place to get all of you as excited as we are for our first ever national marketing campaign, which will kick off with a commercial during the Super Bowl in just a few days!

Traditionally, HomeAway has relied on online marketing to spread the word about our product – your homes – to travelers all over the world. But with the company’s 5th birthday just around the corner, we thought it was high time to cast a wider net to expand the pool of potential vacation home renters and bring more bookings to our owners.

One of the challenges of embarking on a television ad campaign, though, is that we are a web-based company. We have to get people to go from their television to our website to really consider our efforts a success. With this in mind, we’ve made the site an integral part of our campaign to encourage travelers not to settle for a hotel room when they can rent an entire home.

And who better to prove the value of vacation rentals over hotels than America’s most iconic traveling family, the Griswolds! We are thrilled to bring the Griswolds back to the screen for the start of our ad campaign – a 30-second “mock trailer” enticing viewers to visit HomeAway.com to view a short film based on the original National Lampoon’s movies. (Take a look at a sneak peek to our behind-the-scenes footage of the shoot!)

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