Online travel company travelocity.com is taking advantage of the collective post-Christmas gloom with a advertising campaign focusing on a stressed-out worker.

The ad opens with a young bloke being woken by the bleep of his alarm clock.

Taking a comic look at the daily grind, the office worker is shown squeezing onto the train on his way to work, sitting in his office and finally getting home and collapsing into bed in his suit - before the whole routine starts again.

The spot ends with a shot of an idyllic beach and the line, "You work too hard, you need a holiday."

Ad agency St Luke's came up with the idea after seeing the statistic that 60% of UK workers don't take their full yearly holiday entitlement.

"Britain is a nation in the grip of overwork - something we feel particularly strongly at this time of year," said account director Tom Lucas.

"We've focused on this social trend to create a campaign people will identify with,"he added.

The campaign, which breaks today, will appear in the morning papers and on sandwich wrappers - as well as on TV - in a bid to catch potential customers at their most susceptible.