What, was Alec Baldwin not available?
After blowing up its Negotiator pitchman played by actor William Shatner in a Super Bowl spot last February, having his bus go off a cliff, Priceline.com Inc. resurrected the character in a new TV ad.
The Norwalk-based dotcom said it did so after a survey suggested 94 percent of its customers wanted to see the character again.
There”™s no publicity like free publicity, and Priceline scored with headlines in hundreds of publications from coast to coast (memo to Priceline”™s longtime marketing chief Brent Keller: Add one more to the list.)
If Shatner”™s run with Priceline since the late 1990s has easily eclipsed the starship Enterprise”™s “five-year mission to boldly go where no man has gone before,” the question remains how much longer the most famous advertising voyage by any Connecticut company in recent memory will continue.
The Negotiator”™s latest position appeared to be the Left Coast, where a man finds him at the base of a cliff, attired in coat, tie and wetsuit shorts, with surfboard in hand.
“You still have it,” the man tells the apparently immortal Negotiator.
“I”™ll always have it,” Shatner responds, as he paddles off into the incoming waves.
