Priceline focuses on hotel savings in new ad campaign

January 21, 2010 | Online Travel

Priceline.com unveiled its 2010 marketing campaign featuring Emmy Award-winning actor William Shatner, who is returning for his 12th year as priceline.com's celebrity spokesman.

The campaign includes TV, online and print advertisements created by Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners (BSSP), priceline.com’s San Francisco-based advertising agency. No financial details of the campaign were released.

The campaign is a further extension of Shatner’s successful run as the Priceline Negotiator. This time, Shatner will be joined by a new sidekick named Big Deal.

“We believe that priceline.com is best-known among consumers for our Name Your Own Price hotel service, which consistently delivers the deepest savings in the online travel industry,” said priceline.com’s Chief Marketing Officer Brett Keller. “We are going to further strengthen that message and our brand position in the market through this campaign.”

Keller continued, “Following the success of an earlier character, No Fee, who helped The Priceline Negotiator highlight priceline.com’s elimination of airline ticket booking fees in 2007, we have created Big Deal, a new Negotiator sidekick. In an amusing and entertaining way, Big Deal helps The Negotiator demonstrate just how big the hotel deals are at priceline.com, how easy it is to get them and, most importantly, that priceline.com is the home of the ‘Big Deal’.”

Most TV and film buffs know William Shatner for his work in series such as Star Trek and Boston Legal, which recently completed a four-year run. Mr. Shatner now has a new interview series, titled Shatner’s Raw Nerve, running on The Biography Channel. And, of course, fans know him for his work on priceline.com’s commercials. This will be the 4th consecutive year that Mr. Shatner has appeared in the spots as The Priceline Negotiator - a shrewd, hard-bargaining professional negotiator who will stop at nothing to obtain the best travel deals and maximum savings for priceline.com customers.

Mr. Shatner first appeared in a priceline.com advertisement in 1998. Early priceline.com commercials featured a singing William Shatner twisting the words of ‘70s pop hits like “Age of Aquarius”, “Convoy” and “Two Tickets to Paradise” into odes to priceline.com and its money saving prowess.

The ads were spoofed by Jay Leno, parodied on Saturday Night Live, lampooned in MAD Magazine, and even featured as a question on Jeopardy and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Later on, priceline.com paired Mr. Shatner with his former co-star and friend Leonard Nimoy. Then, in 2007, Mr. Shatner stepped into character for the first time as The Priceline Negotiator.

“We are very pleased with how The Negotiator has become his own social phenomenon, much like William Shatner did in the earliest priceline.com commercials,” said Mike Shine, BSSP’s co-Creative Director. “When you look on Twitter, Facebook or YouTube, you’ll see people re-creating that karate kick, singing the Negotiator ‘sting’ or just talking about how The Negotiator found them a sweet Priceline deal. When a concept has ‘legs’ like that, the brand recognition for an advertiser just multiplies.”

Related Link: Priceline.com’s new TV Spot