To encourage Americans to actually go on vacation every once in awhile—and ideally stay at a Westin-owned hotel—the hospitality chain has partnered with McSweeney's, via BBH New York ,to create the Westin OOO Generator.
The website spits out quirky Out-of-Office (or OOO) responses, written with help from McSweeney's humorists. When the generator completes your OOO message, it also produces an abridged, video-based version for you to share on social media.
McSweeney's passive-aggressive, satirical tone takes center stage; the content is some of the funniest stuff they've produced in awhile. And it's perfect for an ad campaign directed at white-collar professionals who likely don't get to have anywhere near as much fun writing these as they'd like—and barely read the bland vanilla ones they get.
Here's the video the generator spat out for me, with the message below.
Thanks for reaching out. I'm unable to tackle your message right now, because I've discovered I'm really good at parasailing and I've got to make up for lost time. It's a weird discovery to make at this age, but whatever — there's no Olympic event for this sport anyway! It's made me wonder what other vacation-specific activities I'm good at: windsurfing? Classical surfing? Water-propulsion- based jetpack flying? Only one way to find out. I'll be exploring my athletic potential from 10/15 until 10/19. Please contact [redacted]@[redacted].com while I'm away.
Be Well,
Dave K.
Special note: [redacted]@[redacted].com was an alternate contact added by yours truly and is not the product of McSweeney's more subtle creativity.