If there's anything that can match the suspense around 'Who is Digen Verma' (Frooti's teaser campaign from 2001) it has to be the several posts across Facebook, Twitter, and Quora asking: "Who is this trivago guy?" The German MNC offers an online hotel search engine across 56 plus countries. In each of these countries, trivago ads follow the same concept for TV commercials: they don't engage any known faces to tell the trivago story. Those faces become famous because of trivago and not in spite of it. (Look up Tim Williams , also known as the trivago Man).Something similar has happened with the face of trivago in India. He has become the next Sasha Chettri (the Airtel Girl). Unlike Chettri who garnered hate for her omnipresence thanks to a full throttle media burst, the trivago India man gets hate for being un-model-like, if you will. Every now and then, you see a post on social media disapproving of him as someone they find "too weird to be an ad model." There are Quora threads ranging from titles like 'Why do I hate the trivago guy so much' (that's for Tim Williams to be fair) to 'Are you too fed up of the trivago ad guy?' (Yes, that's for our guy).In their defence, he really isn't a model/actor. The trivago India Man is *drumrolls* the company's country development head (India) who lives in Dusseldorf, Germany , and has spent a significant part of the last decade in Europe. While we reached out to trivago's casting agency (Castingtree) in India, in vain; it was a Quora thread that led us to Kumar. In an e-mail interaction with BE, Kumar explained how he was roped in to feature in the ad: "We had a hard time casting for a suitable model, so I was asked by our brand marketing head to do it. Initially I was slightly reluctant to take on this role but in the end, I am happy it got people curious about trivago and what we do. We always think that a Mr. or Ms. trivago should just be like one of us. Anyone is capable of using trivago to search for their ideal hotel and who better to explain the product than an ordinary/average person."Thanks to the ad though, Kumar is no longer an ordinary person. Life in Germany is as normal as it can be but every time he visits India, he does get a few heads turning and eyeballs rolling. Once, a cab driver in Delhi recognised him and could not believe that a TV guy would hire such a taxi. "Last Sunday, I was shopping in a mall in Gurgaon. While paying for my bills, I stood in line with a family and one of their younger sons (about 9-10 years) said in Hindi “Isko TV pe dekha hai” . His parents kept looking at me till they eventually figured out I was the one from the trivago commercials. I did not have the usual beard and moustache I had in the commercial, so it was not easy to recognise me, but the kid was smart and this made my day."It's not always a pleasant experience though. There are some negative tweets and direct comments on his social media profiles.In fact, Kumar himself shares one such post with us. This one is from writer-filmmaker Abbas Tyrewala mock-critiquing his presence in the ad. Tyrewala writes: "The fellow in the Trivago ads... is he owner? Nothing else justifies that facial hair singing to me about hotel prices ten times a day.""When you are on TV in India, you are reaching millions of people, so some 10 -20 tweets against me do not really matter," he says. Kumar comes from a lower middle class family in Jharkhand . His family and friends get excited about his appearance on TV. For them, anyone on TV is a star and a celebrity, he says. "Though it may not be the case with me. I still fulfill my daily responsibilities as a country manager at trivago back in Germany," he adds.There must be moments when he rethinks his decision of agreeing to do this, we wonder. "We follow a simple philosophy of “power of proof” at trivago. This commercial was first tested in a closed sample survey, followed by tests on online video campaign before being launched on TV. And now that you want to speak about it, it seems like it’s working?"