Did you see the first Trivago Guy commercial last year? It wasn’t meant to be funny or creepy, but that’s what it was. No fault of actor Tim Williams who plays the now-iconic spokesperson for the travel site, we were treated to an inhumanly long torso slithering toward us styled in a way that made absolutely zero sense. Did this guy just roll out of bed? Did he literally fall into this commercial and pick himself up right before the camera started? Is that sorta-beard really working for him? All of these questions and more spread throughout social media like a firestorm and people were REALLY disturbed by this man. If you didn’t see the spot, check it out below and see what we’re talking about.
After such harsh criticism, most companies may have blamed the actor and pulled the plug. Not Trivago. They decided to have fun with it and began a slow evolution of the character into something that people were more interested in seeing. Later commercials featured Williams in clothes that actually fit and in colors that weren’t so darn bland. Hey, look at that black button down. That’s nice! Oh and a haircut. That makes sense too! There was even a contest hosted by Trivago inviting people to apply to restyle Williams in a more pleasing way and in the latest installment last night, he was actually shaving IN the commercial!
We All Need a Trivago Guy
What Trivago did that is so revolutionary is they stuck with their poor character launch. Rather than scrapping the scrappy-looking Williams and bringing in a new prettyboy, they got everyone else involved in the transformation of Williams into a 
pretty boy himself. And seriously, everyone is talking about it. Google “Trivago Guy” and you’ll see a years-worth of coverage. Blogs. News. Social Media. He’s a commodity now and has been since his first disastrous appearance. We should all be so lucky to have a Trivago Guy of our own.
I can’t find information relating to an increase in the site’s use related to all this attention, but a lot of people who probably couldn’t even pronounce “Trivago” one year ago are using the word on the regular. So what’s the lesson here? We obviously can’t just go get a Trivago Guy. And truthfully for the rest of us, we don’t have to have some poorly-styled dude freaking us out and making us think he’ll break in to our hotel room and steal our valuables to turn our businesses into household names.
The lesson here is ACTUALLY to pay attention to what you’ve done that IS getting attention. We all know that if you’re getting positive attention for something, you keep doing it. But what Trivago has taught us is to embrace the negative responses and instead of reacting to them by sweeping what we’ve done under the rug in embarrassment, we should come up with creative new ways to get others involved in changing what they didn’t like.
What programs, campaigns, or ideas have you launched in the past that elicited a negative reaction? Using the Trivago method, what could you have done to turn it into a positive? (Or if you’re just that good, what did you do using your own methods?)
Next week: Would you like to play a game?
