A Supermodel, a Tiny Dog and How Priceline Turned William Shatner Into a Legendary Pitchman
Skift Take
We don't know if it was really "a supermodel" and her tiny dog that William Shatner dispatched to Priceline.com headquarters in the late 1990s to do due dilgence on the company, but we do know that Shatner, who smashed a guitar during one shoot, was highly talented and broke new ground for an emerging brand.
Skift launched its largest and most ambitious project yet, The Definitive Oral History of Online Travel, on June 1.
In nearly 40,000 words founders, CEOs, other executives and insiders tell a story in their own words about the creation of Internet giants such as Expedia, Priceline, Travelocity, Orbitz, TripAdvisor and more.
Not all of the interviews fit into the big story so we are publishing standalone stories that offer deeper insight into information we collected during the three-month research process.
After his roles as Captain Kirk in Star Trek in the 1960s and T.J. Hooker in the 1980s, actor William Shatner's career was seemingly in its latter stages in 1998 when a Priceline.com marketing executive, Jord Poster, figured out a way to contact him through a personal connection, and helped create the magic that became Shatner as the legendary spokesman of Priceline.
Skipping the go-betweens, Poster arranged a meeting between Shatner and Priceline.com founder and then-CEO Jay Walker. Shatner signed on to do radio for Priceline and then about a year later, in 1999, Walker recalls, Shatner sent a representative in a limousine to Priceline.com headquarters in Norwalk, Connecticut, to perform due diligence on the idea of doing TV for the online travel agency.
In this article today, and one to follow tomorrow, we'll highlight the roles of three executives whose names aren't widely known and who are no longer living. Nevertheless, they played important roles in the evolution of online travel.
Today we're focusing on Jord Poster, a former Priceline.com marketing executive, who died of cancer in 2012. Poster was instrumental in working with Shatner, convincing him to do TV for Priceline.com, and taking branding to new levels through TV advertising.
Jay Walker: I got your note that you were calling me about Jord Poster.
Skift: That's it, exactly.
Walker: What an amazing guy.
Skift: Yeah, why? Tell me why. Tell me about him.
Walker: Jord Poster is the guy who made William Shatner possible at Priceline. Without Jord Poster, there would have been no William Shatner at Priceline, and without William Shatner at Priceline, I think it would have been quite awhile before anybody created a celebrity superstar brand effort. Because Jord was a brand guy. In those days of the Internet, there was nobody who hired celebrity brands, and there was nobody who did advertising on radio and television for Internet brands, for e-commerce brands. Ther
