Video: Booking CMO Says Brand Marketing Has Limits
Photo Credit: Pepijn Rijvers, chief marketing officer at Booking.com, spoke at Skift Forum Europe 2018 about the battle to own the customer. Skift
Skift Take
TV ads can be the hippest type of marketing. But the personal brand of Booking.com's chief marketing officer Pepijn Rijvers is tied up in a data-first approach that instead emphasizes paid ads in search engines.
Pepijn Rijvers isn't a "mad man" — or one of the slick, nattily suited advertising salesmen from the TV series Mad Men.
"We're fairly rational in how we invest," said Rijvers, the chief marketing officer of Booking.com, when he spoke on April 26 in Berlin at Skift Forum Europe.
Pepijn Rijvers acknowledged that an increase in brand marketing is part of Booking.com's mix. But he said he found brand marketing to have limited usefulness relative to other options.
"I don't really think a consumer would want to spend $30 more on a property simply to be able to tell their friends, 'I booked with Booking.' Right?" Rijvers said.
"We're not an aspirational brand. We're very functional."
Is it a marketing problem not to be an a
