At Dallas Fort Worth International Airport in the last weeks of summer 2025, Hertz introduced a marketing idea that required no explainer video. A group of trained golden retrievers appeared among the rolling bags, gate changes and tired families. Travelers stopped. They smiled. Phones came out. The Hertz Gold Squad had arrived, carrying a simple proposition on four paws: the rental company wanted travel to feel golden.
For Brian Canning, then Hertz's head of marketing and loyalty, the dogs solved an old loyalty problem. Points, tiers and expedited service can be valuable, but they are invisible until a traveler uses them. A calm dog in a noisy airport gives the benefit a body. The connection to Gold Plus Rewards needs only one word, and Hertz already owns it in the minds of customers: gold.
Canning's career has prepared him for this kind of translation. Before Hertz, he worked across the travel decisions that happen before and around a trip. At Delta Air Lines, his roles included leadership of the SkyMiles program and customer engagement. At Delta Vacations, he led business growth, marketing and product, then served as chief marketing, product and customer experience officer. Each job sat where an operational system meets a human hope: points becoming status, clicks becoming a vacation, a booking becoming the start of anticipation.
The useful parts of travel
Canning was raised in Southern California and studied advertising and business at the University of Colorado Boulder. He completed a master's in advertising at the University of Florida in 2009 and also studied international marketing at Victoria University of Wellington. The education reads like a map of his later work: creative craft, business context and an instinct for how ideas cross markets.
His early career included brand analytics and strategy at Davis Brand Capital. By 2019, he was at Delta, leading business growth, marketing and product for Delta Vacations. The assignment was wider than promotion. A vacation package has to coordinate air travel, hotels, activities, digital shopping, loyalty economics and customer support. Marketing cannot sit at a polite distance from the product because the product is the itinerary.
That operating range showed up in the work. In 2022, while crypto culture was still filling feeds with non-fungible tokens, Delta Vacations redefined NFT as Nice Free Trips and gave away five vacations. The joke worked because the reward was tangible and the mood was right. People had spent enough time staring at screens. Canning's line for the launch centered the feeling of having a vacation to look forward to.
Later came Vacation Math, a campaign that borrowed the internet's playful habit of inventing convenient arithmetic. A Delta Vacations booking could help earn Medallion status, so the campaign reasoned that taking one vacation made the next one more necessary. It was culturally current, but the loyalty mechanic remained inside the joke. The trend supplied the language. The product supplied the proof.
“The Gold Squad is just the beginning.”Brian Canning, reflecting on his Hertz marketing team
There is also a glimpse of Canning's tone in a comment he left when Delta Vacations rolled out a refreshed brand and shopping experience. He thanked everyone involved, then added a special nod to “Brad from Accounting.” It was a small joke on a large launch, a way of puncturing corporate ceremony without denying the team its credit.
A platform with a leash
Canning joined Hertz in January 2025 as vice president of marketing and loyalty. The company was working through a broader transformation, with direct bookings, customer experience and a newer fleet all carrying strategic weight. His marketing brief had to make a familiar century-old rental brand feel current while keeping the transaction clear.
The Gold Squad launched that summer at DFW and moved to other cities. In February 2026, Hertz brought it to Goldens in Golden, a Colorado event that drew more than 5,500 golden retrievers and their owners. The brand built a Golden Pup Cup Cafe, offered treats and photo opportunities, and worked with dog influencers who documented road trips to the gathering. The dogs were no longer a surprising airport cameo. They had become a traveling cast.
Canning described the original insight in three words: “Traveling can be stressful.” The restraint matters. Start there, and the campaign's job is not to announce corporate affection for dogs. It is to relieve a recognizable point of friction and connect that relief to membership. The Gold Plus program promises faster, easier rental moments. The Squad stages the same promise emotionally.
The business signals gave the idea room to grow. In early 2026, Canning said Gold Plus acquisitions were up 90 percent from the prior year and Hertz.com bookings had improved by double digits, with Gold Squad one of the primary initiatives. Those figures do not turn a dog into a controlled experiment. They do make the campaign accountable to a commercial system rather than applause alone.
The next moves are operational. Hertz has recruited for a full-time Gold Squad Pack Leader. Canning has discussed appearances at more rental locations, airports and community events, along with taking the program outside the United States. A one-day activation can survive on novelty. A platform has to keep delivering the same promise in new scenes, without letting the costume swallow the customer benefit.
From choosing a car to imagining a trip
In spring 2026, Canning and agency Preacher followed with New Car Pairings. The campaign introduces a knowing “car connoisseur” who pairs rental vehicles with occasions such as fishing, stargazing or cruising. Practical transformations move viewers from the lot toward the adventure. Underneath the set pieces is a straightforward product case: much of the fleet is less than a year old, and the Hertz app can help a traveler select the right vehicle.
Canning opened his public description with a useful bit of honesty: “Can choosing your rental car be as exciting as the trip itself? Well, no.” The campaign then tries to add a little of that excitement anyway. The humor works because it refuses to pretend that the rental counter is the destination. The car matters as an instrument of the story a traveler already wants.
Completes a master's degree in advertising at the University of Florida.
Leads growth, marketing, product and customer experience across Delta Vacations and works in Delta loyalty.
Joins Hertz to lead marketing and loyalty; Gold Squad debuts at DFW.
Becomes Hertz CMO and expands the brand platform into events, new creative and planned global appearances.
Across both Hertz campaigns, Canning keeps the product in frame. Gold Squad dramatizes loyalty and customer care. New Car Pairings dramatizes fleet choice and a digital selection experience. The creative may be furry or theatrical, but it points back to a specific reason to choose the brand.
This is the thread connecting Hertz to his Delta Vacations years. Nice Free Trips turned a speculative acronym into an actual journey. Vacation Math converted loyalty mechanics into a familiar cultural joke. The new Hertz work turns a benefit into a live encounter and a vehicle filter into a travel fantasy. Canning does not ask culture to carry the whole message. He uses it as a door into the useful part of the product.
What feeling golden requires
A mature travel brand can buy reach. The harder work is earning a fresh place in memory without breaking the connection to service. Canning's current approach is to make the adjective “golden” behave like an operating brief. The marketing should create relief, choice, ease or joy at the moment a traveler might otherwise feel friction.
That ambition will be tested as Gold Squad grows. International expansion adds culture and logistics. More appearances create more chances for the idea to become routine. The Pack Leader role suggests Hertz understands that a living platform needs stewardship. Dogs require care. Customers do too. Brand consistency, in this case, is partly an operations job.
Canning has already previewed another extension: Peter's Golden Picks, a college-football road trip scheduled to launch in September 2026 with a new member of the Squad. It moves the dogs from airport relief toward weekly fandom while retaining the road-trip logic. The device changes context. Hertz still supplies the movement.
The career arc is tidy without being predetermined. An advertising student learns brand analytics, then enters an airline system where loyalty, product and customer experience overlap. He moves to a rental company whose strongest loyalty word is also a color, a feeling and a dog breed. The opportunity looks obvious only after the pieces have been assembled.
At the center is a practical belief: customers should be able to feel the promise before a marketer finishes explaining it. In a crowded airport, the evidence may arrive wagging its tail.