European – and increasingly global – metasearch engine Skyscanner has hired one of the UK’s current dot-com darlings to become a non-executive director of the business.

But Jason Stockwood’s appointment following his departure as managing director of dating giant match.com probably says a lot about Skyscanner’s intentions to push the brand around the globe – or as he puts it: harness the ”huge potential to build an explosive global brand over the next couple of years”.

Perhaps the first dilemma Stockwood, chief executive and co-founder Gareth Williams and co will wrestle with is what to do about Skyscanner’s marketing strategy.

Stockwood is credited with masterminding the cheeky branding campaigns for match.com, but also has a strong pedigree in online having worked at Travelocity, lastminute.com and Lufthansa.

Until now, however, Skyscanner has relied almost exclusively on canny SEO, word-of-mouth and PPC keyword buys.

But with aspirations to grow Skyscanner into new markets and not have the advantage (like it did in the UK) of first-mover advantage, Skyscanner could be considering investing in that dark world of marketing for online travel brands: above-the-line advertising – an area until recently many a metasearch provider has shied away from.

In the UK, for example, price comparison site Cheapflights famously claimed its entire growth strategy was based on online advertising and that it hadn’t spent more than a few thousand UK pounds on offline marketing.

All this changed when Travelsupermarket spent jaw-dropping amounts – some put it at around £15 million – on TV advertising in the UK, a figure unheard of amongst the metasearch players.

Although many sneered at Travelsupermarket’s strategy, others saw what the Cheshire-based, London Stock Exchange-listed company was doing: building a brand.

TS is now the number one metasearch engine in the UK and almost sweeps younger, arguably more prudent players such as Kayak away before it.

So some might say TS’s investment worked out. Skyscanner may be considering the same as it looks to establish a presence in new markets.

Skyscanner is tight-lipped as to whether Stockwood’s appointment will trigger glitzy offline marketing campaigns, but it admits there is now an “increased emphasis” on building the brand.

Related posts: