Trivago Success Story
Hotel? Trivago! Have you ever searched for Hotel Online watch the full video here. You might be admiring why all of a sudden, I am talking about one of the very popular trolls online now a day? No, I’m not here to create a meme or comments on the trolls. The whole idea of me talking about the topic is to put some light on different aspects of how and why Trivago went with something unexpected. Trivago’s is a Germany-based company and the person seen in Trivago India’s TV commercials is country head for India Abhinav Kumar. Kumar featured in his employer’s campaign because the company believes in casting someone who looks like your average person on the street. Here, people kept wondering whether it was his un-model-like appearance and body language, or just his omnipresence across every commercial break that left them more annoyed than amused. Not because Abhinav is the country head he is the face of the brand but also for other countries you won’t find a celebrity for brand endorsement.
Trivago is not the only hotel search/ booking site in India. Trivago actually is a traveling band that aggregates hotel prices from over 100 booking sites, launched in 2005. Thus, when you have an aggressive marketplace and unless you're upfront with consumers, throughout the year, you're easily forgotten about. One side there was competition from MakeMyTrip who had Alia Bhat & Ranveer Singh for endorsement whereas on other hands there was Deepika for IBIBO and more. In such a case when Trivago tweaks the campaign with a Guy with a slightly rumpled appearance caused everyone to notice, the strategy applied by Trivago was a foremost solution. By applying it the company had two direct benefits.
1. The company was able to save crores of rupees, which could have been otherwise used to only sign a big celeb. There may a case that employee would have done this out of courtesy or else would have been paid extra for the same but still, I assume it might be less than what a celebrity would have asked for as a fee.
2. The amount saved from the former activity was then utilized to cover almost all available slots aggressively. I remember days when any video site I was surfing for eg: Youtube, Hotstar, etc and I used to see only one person again and again with the same pitch for a Hotel aggregator site.
Conclusion
So what was the overall impact of the campaign? As per the report, Trivago’s revenue went up by 68% along with onsite traffic. Thus share whats your point of view on this topic. Do comment and share if you find it interesting.