Where is my Gnome?

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Where is my Gnome? was a series of viral marketing ads used by Travelocity in early 2004. The ads consisted of a man named "Bill" looking for his garden gnome. On January 3, the Boston Herald and the Boston Globe had these ads on their publication. The ads were inspired by the travelling gnome prank.

After TV ads voiced by Harry Enfield were screened nationally on United States networks, and on a website whereismygnome.com, many readers considered it to be a prank of the Garden Gnome Liberation Front.

The gnome remains in the commercials; however, he is no longer held against his will, but now works as "The Roaming Gnome: Denouncer of Travel Myths." In these commercials he discusses two myths, one where the gnome states that Travelocity's services are able to "denounce" the myth, and the other where the gnome ends up causing a mess. In one such commercial, he visits the Bermuda Triangle to see if things really do disappear there, denouncing the myth even as objects disappear behind him until he himself also vanishes midsentence.

The gnome has since appeared in a number of short spots demonstrating items on a list of activities that a well-seasoned traveler should try to do, including:

Stay at a hotel with a swim-up bar (he is used as a fruit juicer)
Stay at an ice hotel (he is frozen into a wall)
Tour a Hawaiian volcano (he toasts a marshmallow over the crater and sets it on fire)
Cliff dive in Mexico (he plunges screaming over a cliff)
Visit the world's highest waterfall (he floats downriver on an inner tube, then drops screaming over the falls)
Stay at a five-star hotel (he jumps on his room's bed and hits the ceiling, getting his head stuck)

In 2006, a major promotion involved 20 Travelocity gnomes carefully hidden throughout the 4.5-acre atrium of Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center in Kissimmee, Fla. During the resort's Best of Florida Christmas promotion, guests were encouraged to find the gnomes to win an Alaskan cruise.

Both the idea of a travelling gnome and the appearance of the gnome used in the commercials is present in the 2001 film Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain. The main character sends her father's garden gnome all over the world with a friend. After discovering his gnome is missing, the father later gets pictures of the gnome in front of various world landmarks in the mail. The film pre-dates the ad campaign, and could be a possible inspiration. (Of course, the actual inspiration for both is the travelling gnome prank, which is first recorded to have occurred in Australia in 1986.)