Skift Take
Trivago is changing its brand marketing approach to abolish the Mr. and Ms. Trivago cult of personality. Instead Trivago is trying to establish deep emotional connections with viewers. TV will still be important despite the digital surge in consumer preferences, and in Trivago's calculations, YouTube is not a particularly effective option.
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They say cats have nine lives. Star Trek icon William Shatner, as the Priceline Negotiator, had several before fading away from the company's commercials. And now the Trivago men and women around the world, the actors who saturated TV and pitched the company's wares, have been dispatched to parts unknown, and retired from Trivago's TV commercial lineup.
During Trivago's earnings call Tuesday, chief financial officer Matthias Tillman said the hotel-search company shifted away from its memorable "Mr. Trivago" ads.
"So we started to prepare our new brand marketing campaign for summer and it is a continuation of our shift away from the Mr. Trivago concept," Tillman said. "We tested a more engagement-driven approach last summer as we believe it was a better fit for the sentiment in the market. And we were very happy with the results, and we got some great learnings."
In the U.S. in recent years before the pandemic, the Trivago Guy, actor and musician Tim Williams, was everywhere on broadcast TV, whether it was during Sunday National Football League games or on NBC Nightly News. The same was tru