According to the Advertising Standards Authority (‘ASA’), the UK adverts from Booking.com have received the second highest number of complaints in both 2015 and 2014.  The adverts were perceived as being offensive on the basis that the word “booking” was being used as an obvious replacement for a phonetically identical expletive. Booking.com countered that the purpose of the adverts was to reinforce brand recognition and association in respect of the word 'booking', both as a company name and website URL. Consequently, the word was repeated throughout the adverts in sentences such as, “Look at the booking view!” and “It doesn't get any booking better than this!”. Despite the number of complaints, the ASA found in favour of Booking.com, ruling that the adverts were merely a light-hearted play on words, and as such did not breach either the CAP Code (Edition 12) or BCAP Code.

Interestingly, the voice-over at the end of the adverts states, “Booking dot com, booking dot yeah!", thereby arguably also promoting the domain ‘booking.yeah’.  This leads us to wonder how much web traffic has been inadvertently diverted to look for the TLD (top level domain) '.yeah' that does not even actually exist! Others in a similar position, such as www.comparethemarket.com have registered their “sister” sites, and possibly sub-brands, www.comparethemeerkat.com, so this leaves us questioning if this aspect is good branding practice?

The question as to whether “booking” is capable of functioning as a brand and an indication of single source origin is discussed in our related post here.

Click here to see the cheeky 60 second “Booking.yeah” ad campaign on YouTube.