William Shatner’s Priceline Negotiator Killed Off in New Commerical
William Shatner can add the death of another iconic character to his list. Shatner, who most recently has been known as the “Priceline Negotiator” for the travel service, is yet again grieving the loss of one if his characters who was killed in the line of duty.
Shatner’s famed Negotiator character pops up randomly and coerces people into finding great deals. This has become synonymous with the Priceline brand. After 14 years of being the face for the travel site, five of those spent as the Negotiator, Shatner is being killed off in a fiery bus accident in Priceline’s newest TV spot, meant to signify a change in advertising methods. In the new 30 second commercial, Shatner comes to the aid of a bus teetering on a cliff. After getting all of the vacationers safely off the bus and onto solid land, he hands a woman his cellphone and says, “Save yourselves – some money” before he and the buss plummet into the ravine, and in case there was any hint of the Negotiator’s possible survival, the bus promptly erupts in a fiery explosion.
“I’m in grief mode,” Shatner told the Associated Press. “It’s not the first time I’ve had an iconic character die off,” he said referring to Star Trek’s Captain Kirk being killed off. While Shatner spent the majority of his time promoting Priceline’s bidding service, or “Name your own price” feature, Priceline wanted to promote their often unnoticed set price deals that covers 200,000 hotels in 140 countries.
“The challenge is harder to get people’s attention than it used to be. So we decided to do something really over the top to get the message across,” Christopher Soder, CEO of Priceline.com North America, said to AP. Apparently, the best way to make the move from the “you chose your price” to the “pay what we tell you” approach was to literally kill off their old marketing campaign. Despite Shatner’s long-standing relationship with Priceline, and his success in the role, it was time to shake things up.
In fact, Peter Sealey, professor at the Claremont Graduate University’s school of management, blamed Shatner’s fantastic performance as the reason they had to make such a production of killing him off. “Had he been less effective, he could have been allowed to fade away,” he told AP. “I don’t know if I would have gone as far as the bus exploding.”
While Soder explained that they love Shatner, and he’s still under contract with them, it’s unclear at this time whether we should be on the lookout for a beyond-the-grave message from the Priceline Negotiator. All I know is, Priceline better figure this nonsense out because I do not want to have to start listening to that stupid gnome for travel advice.
