Ages ago, we asked about your favorite car-related marketing campaign. Your answers were varied as they were well-thought out – Nissan’s toy 300ZX, Iacocca daring us to find a better car, and VW’s Star Wars ad.
Absent from all of the above? Celebrity endorsements… unless you count Ken & Barbie in the Z ad. This time around, we’re asking you what’s the most memorable car ad (for better or worse) featuring someone straight out of central casting?
For sheer impact, I’ve got to point towards VW and one of the many instalments in their fantastically self-deprecating “Think Small” campaign. Sure, the Lemon and Live Below Your Means ads made for fantastic copy; showing a towering basketball player next to a funny-looking import car must’ve taken more than a few animated conversations in smoky conference rooms.
Don’t limit your musings to American car ads featuring famous stars, either. In the late Eighties, smack-dab in the middle of Back to the Future II & III fever and right at the end of Family Ties, a youthful Michael J. Fox showed up in a Japanese-market ad for the 1989 Honda Integra.
Eighties music, inexplicable somersaults, and a dash of well-rehearsed Japanese? Super.
What’s your pick for a memorable car ad with a celebrity entering stage left? There’s one for sure I hope someone mentions; it’s for a domestic sedan — that’s all I’ll say.
The old Mazda ads with James Garner would be my choice with these rules.
Dustin Hoffman and the VW Type 3.
Ricardo Montalban: “Look what they’ve done to my car!” (Chrysler Cordoba)
Shaq with his knees wrapped around the wheel of a Buick?
Ricardo Montalban for crooning about rich, Corinthian leather?
|You in that Buick commercial. You know you don’t fit in that Buick.”
Jill Wagner? Jill Wagner.
+10
The sad TTAC is this: if hot girls could sell cars, Mercury would be the best-selling brand today. But they can’t.
You gotta put Mercury on your list
I thought it was “You gotta put Freddy Mercury, Enya, Liszt”
I have a very diverse CD changer.
good one, it took me at least a few years to realize she was selling cars…
insider trading deal?
Jill Wagner was involved in insider trading?
well jill wagner made me aware of something i was never aware of before – mercury.
wasn’t that her job?
still did not buy one.
Farrah Fawcett and the Mercury Cougar. She made more than one commercial for them, but this is a good/readily available one.
No, but Hollywood can UN-sell me a car.
Cadillac and Kate Walsh.
VW and John Mayer.
Ford and Toby Keith (thankfully Mike Rowe and Denis Leary saved it)
I thought the Caddy/Kate Walsh commercials were great, and right on message for Caddy.
I saw it as a problem because guys (most Caddy buyers) just saw her as the friend from Drew Carey, assuming they recognized her at all. Women know her from Grey’s Anatomy, but the sexual overtones of the ad clearly weren’t there to appeal to them.
Actually, her best role? Season 1 of the Fargo TV series.
Matthew McConaughey totally sold me on Lincoln.
Really.
I swear.
Well….. alright alright alright.
He almost got me, too. Then I cheaped out at the last minute and bought a Fusion instead. But I still keep looking at the MKZ…and the Continental that I’d never be able to afford, and the MKX that I might have to move up to if the kids keep getting bigger (they will).
Stick with the Fusion…same basic car as the MKZ, and it’s a) far better looking, and b) a far better deal.
Ditto with the MKX.
Lincoln is such a waste. The Matthew McConaughey ads just prove it. They only thing that would make those ads better is if they showed him getting in his Bentley (or whatever he really drives) afterwards.
Searched around the internet and except for opinion pieces I can’t find anything that says Mcconaughey does not drive a Lincoln SUV. Maybe it’s part of his contract, which would be smart because the last thing they want is a picture of him in a GM product.
And the same argument could be made about any number of Lexus, Acura, and Infiniti products. There are differences, just like there are differences between Lincolns and the Ford’s they’re based on. Its only worth considering those differences when its a non-American car brand, amirite?
I could list the reasons to buy a Lincoln over the Ford its based on, depending on your priorities, starting with the fact that you can’t get a Fusion with 400 hp and a luxury interior, but it would be a waste due to the close minded nature of detractors of American luxury brands. If you can sit in an MKZ and tell me with all honesty that its the exact same environment as a Fusion, then I invite you to sit in an Avalon and an ES and tell me how its exactly the same. But you wouldn’t, because Lexus.
BTW, good to see Wilt Chamberlain took time out of his Shakesperian-in-magnitude quest to impregnate 15% of the females in the United States to make that VW ad…
I was musing on how fashion changes.
Now those shorts on a member of the fairer sex would get double takes. ;-)
Wild did another VW ad, for the Rabbit (Golf). He could actually fit in that, he’s driving along while the narrator asks why he bought the car. At the end of the ad he climbs out of the car and says “It has more head room than my Rolls-Royce!” One of the more memorable car ads that I’ve seen.
Patrick Stewart for Pontiac. Because nothing says “American Performance car” like a British man known for playing a French starship captain on a SiFi t.v. show.
Make it so…
tried to give you a star – then realized i was on the wrong site.
flamers in 3….2…..1
The Univision overlords would never tolerate that level of anti-British and anti-French rhetoric! /s
My favorite celebrity endorsements are at the local level. Nothing like a poorly produced Kia dealership commercial with “generic local sports star” in it. Now that’s good TV.
In Albuquerque we’ve got a used car dealership which has former Bears star Brian Urlacher as one of the investors. New Mexico born and raised, played for UNM before being drafted.
I tend to forget about him until one of his commercials plays.
John Elway took it one step further and bought all the dealerships he was pitching for.
The guy was so popular in Colorado that if he hadn’t been such a raging man-wh*re all those years he was playing for the Broncos, he’d have been elected governor-for-life.
(Rumor is Peyton Manning may run for office in Tennessee.)
Manning was really smart – he bought into some Papa Johns franchises in the Denver area just as Colorado was legalizing weed.
All he needs now is a lock on the microwave burrito market, and he’ll be a stoner magnate.
insider trading deal?
I see Elway stickers all over. Even in the NYC area. Probably since he’s been in the market for 20 odd years.
He was in, then sold all his dealerships sometime in the aughts…and now he’s back.
Hollywood nearly sold me a red hawkeye WRX when I saw Ansel Elgort’s Baby pull a 180-in, 180-out on Atlanta surface streets.
They definitely sold me on a Highland Green ’68 fastback, and did it eleven years before I was born. Bravo, Hollywood.
If Christopher Plummer and his gaggle of middle-aged beauties don’t make you immediately purchase a Ninety-Eight Regency, you have neither taste nor humanity…
https:// http://www.youtube.com /watch?v=iEe-DiFJrIk
In the 80s and 90s, there were a *lot* of A-list stars, who would never stoop to do a commercial in the USA, who took very tidy sums for Japanese ads based on the assurance no one in the USA would see them shilling for Pocari Sweat (Harrison Ford, IIRC) or whatever. There was even a Twin-Peaks themed ad campaign (with Japanese FBI “Agent” inserted) that used a lot of the cast. It was for canned coffee, I think.
It was very interesting to see when I was stationed there in 1991-93.
The Bruce Willis Daihatsu commercial is a good example of this.
The good news is that these American stars get to travel to Tokyo and do whiskey ads, and fall in love with someone who looks like ScarJo.
I’m going to go with the opening shot of “Lost In Translation” as one of the finest ever put on screen…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAyR9Mwrkjg
I was bored by most of that film, except the part when Bill Murray’s character is in the studio to shoot the Suntory commercial. It reminds me so much of the endless meetings we used to have when I worked for Japanese companies. Just like the director’s long rant, one of us would ask one of the guys here from the home office in Japan a question, they’d talk amongst themselves (in Japanese) for 10 minutes, then respond “Difficult.”
When Cadillac had Led Zepplin promote their cars, all I could think was what a bunch of sell outs. Didn’t change my lowly opinion of Cadillac.
I’ve never understood the fascination with idolizing some jackrabbit because he acted in a movie or TV show. For the same reason traditional media is trash for filling air time with dolts from Hollywood, rather than news; I similarly don’t respect that same dolt in a commercial. If they’ve accomplished something in life that makes a difference in helping people sure, but simply existing doesn’t make anyone worthwhile of attention.
So no, when I see a car company use a so called celebrity in an ad I assume the car is such a pile they cannot sell it otherwise. That’s how I’ve always felt, as a child trying to watch the news for the weather for school getting barraged with a bunch of losers I couldn’t care about, to now an adult that has to hear on social media about some stupid idiots complaining from their mansion about some other idiot across Hollywood that is whining to their baby daddy.
Your lawn. Get off it?
“I’ve never understood the fascination with idolizing some jackrabbit because he acted in a movie or TV show.”
Agreed, and the current president is an excellent example of why this is such a stupid idea.
Your president built an empire and has spent his life helping people, I doubt he much cared about the success of a TV show that brought in relatively little money, the network was the one that won in that case. Not to mention I’ve never even seen an episode of it, as many have not.
No I’m not being crockety, it truly is a strange world that any rational human being would idolize another simply for leading a fictional unrealistic life on a television while making more in a year than most people make in a year. Why anyone would treat someone that is known simply for acting on TV any different than a jester is beyond me.
Paul Hogan, Crocodile Dundee, about single-handedly rescued Subaru from complete obscurity in 1995 or so. He sold a whack of Legacy wagons with cladding (but no raised ride height at the time) as the Outback – splashing through 9 inches of muddy water at 45 mph. The stilts were added over the next 18 months.
Richard Dreyfuss, before he was a star, in an AMC Javelin commercial:
WordPress is acting weird with links. You can find the ads I mentioned here:
http://www.carsindepth.com/?cat=519
AMC’s ad agency must have had a line on up and coming NYC talent. Here’s Roberto DeNiro pitching the AMC Ambassador. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvGbmpWIOcI
The Three Stooges for Simoniz:
Comedian Ernie Kovacs (who I believe died in a wreck in a Corvair) and his wife, singer & dancer, Edie Adams, for the 1955 Ford:
The newly formed American Motors had a deal with Walt Disney.
Mickey Mouse, Pluto Pup and Jiminy Cricket did commercials for Nash while Donald Duck worked for Hudson.
http://www.carsindepth.com/?p=10937
The gang from the Peanuts comic strip were used as shills to push Ford Falcons. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz1t_WqYZqI
Jonathan Pryce – Infiniti
I don’t think this alliance has been mentioned yet. It was an effective ad campaign, and I distinctly remember seeing G’s, J’s, and Q’s showing up in my Northeastern town after Jonathan’s eloquent endorsement.
My favorite endorsement though is probably Kate Walsh in the Cadillac ads. It was mentioned earlier, but it should be emphasized again.
Paul Hogan selling Australia’s #1 rugged sport utility wagon, the Subaru Outback, was a good ad series.
Straight from the horse’s mouth – Mr. Ed promoting Studebaker
I will admit the Camaro in the first Transformers movie of 2007 did appeal to me, especially considering how nasty the previous Camaro was during its later years.
I seem to recall a professional basketball player who supposedly owned a Beetle. Maybe Wilt Chamberlain? He had the front seat removed and drove it from the back.
When I was a kid I really liked the product placement by Chevrolet on the ABC network. In addition to featuring Chevrolets in the TV shows when a scene with a car was called for, they had the stars of various ABC TV shows peddle the merchandise in commercials. We saw the cast of “Bewitched,” “The Man from UNCLE,” and “Bonanza” pushing Chevrolets. On Youtube there’s a commercial from 1965 where the stars of all three shows appear together with the then new Chevrolet lineup of vehicles.
Later on, I remember Hoss Cartwright (Dan Blocker) pushint the new Chevy Cheyenne pickup truck in 1971 or maybe 1972.
One of my favorites featured Abner Kravitz (George Tobias) calming down his nosy wife Gladys (Alice Pearce) and informing her that the tilt steering wheel in the Chevrolet Impala was no act of witchcraft, but a wonderful new optional feature that resulted from technology.
TONS of product placement on TV shows of the era…this could be a good QOTD.
Jim Rockford’s Firebird…all the Fords on “Charlie’s Angels”…etc
When I learned LeBron drives a Kia (snort) I rushed out and bought one myself.
I’m sure its been mentioned already, but Ringo Starr shilling for “not your father’s” Oldsmobiles is still just as vivid and tacky in memory as day I saw it twenty or whatever years ago.
All of those Oldsmobile commercials were terrible except for Leonard Nimoy’s (cause come on Spock).
It did inspire Ray Stevens to sing “This IS your Daddy’s Oldsmobile” (Don’t it look good, don’t it smell good, don’t you love the way it feels?) Likely that campaign would have sold more Olds.
If you’re old enough, you remember the early days of TV when sponsors owned the shows – the networks couldn’t produce content. As a result, the stars of the shows did the ads, like Phil Silvers selling Lucky Strike cigarettes, and Ed Wynn appearing in gasoline ads. (Just google the names)
GM had a couple shows sponsored by Chevrolet, the Dinah Shore Chevy Show, and Bonanza. For product endorsement, you can’t beat Dinah Shore singing the show’s theme song, “See the USA in your Chevrolet…” unless it’s the voice of Lorne Greene pronouncing MONNN-za.