Ten Celebrity Ad Campaigns I Like

By and large, I am not enamored of celebrity-driven ads, any more than I am any other type of advertising. Very few of the advertisements I have seen have been anywhere nearly as amusing as the medium they were inserted into, and many, particularly the ones we have to watch or listen to, can be an outright ordeal.

Many of the best ads feature people we do not know or need to know. Who amongst us knows that the current looney-tunes Progressive Insurance pitch girl is an actress named Stephanie Courtney or that the crying Indian in the anti-pollution poster put out by the Keep America Beautiful Coalition was Iron Eyes Cody?

Still, a good many celebrity ads work well and may even be somewhat amusing...the first time you see them. The trouble with all ads is that, by their nature, they bring themselves to our attention again and again and again.

Let me provide a list of my ten favorite celebrity ads. What I looked for in putting this list together was, primarily, entertainment value, but I also kept in mind how well each ad seemed to sell the product (without being obnoxious or insulting, of course).

Most, but not all of these ads are from television. In a number of cases, I have no use for the product, and, in one case, would promptly spit it out if I ever had the misfortune to drink another sip of it again. I am not looking at the quality of the product here, but the quality of the pitch.

As I often do, I will list these in reverse order of favor, with the best being the last.

10. Jason Alexander for Kentucky Fried Chicken

Quite apart from being an excellent comedian and a star of the highly successful Seinfeld series, Jason Alexander is a top-notch pitchman. He has huckstered a number of products throughout his career, the most recent one being Jenny Craig, but I like his KFC ads in particular. The fact that I like KFC itself in particular has little to do with the case.

Alexander shot a number of different commercials for the fast-food franchise, which is a good thing. At least we got some variety throughout the campaign. He didn't necessarily try to be George Costanza, but, because he was that person for a while, we tended to associate that funny character with the actual actor. This, I think made the commercials a lot more effective than if an unknown actor had done and said the exact same thing.

The ads were amusing, but not hilarious, by any means. I'm giving this campaign points for effectiveness.

Just a quick note, before I move on: Colonel Sanders himself once appeared on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In for a very quick mock ad. The just of what he said was: "We buy only the finest chickens for Kentucky Fried Chicken...We steal the rest."

9. Britney Spears for Pepsi

I liked this ad campaign. It was well-staged and featured Britney Spears at her best, before she began the process of crashing and burning. Not only were they sexy or, at any rate, easy on the eyes, they allowed you to remember what the actual product was the sponsors were paying Ms. Spears to push. Here is a good example of a Pepsi ad from that campaign.

8. James Earl Jones for BellAtlantic (Verizon)

The particular ads I want to focus on are the ones Jones did for the Bell Atlantic Visa Card. The overriding theme of many of them was that the purchasing power the card generated would enable you, the ardent sportsperson, to finally capture the notorious catfish, "Bubba." Remember that? Jones would close out those ads, in which he introduced one step after another, with: "...and this is Bubba."

Both James Earl Jones and Bill Cosby have been two of the most effective black pitchmen in the business. People of all races seem willing to believe whatever they're saying because they present the product so well. Once, when I was having an after-rehearsal drink with some theater friends, one of them-a very talented older lady, who took her craft seriously-remarked about how deplorable it was that such a distinguished stage performer such as James Earl Jones had stooped to doing commercials.

I disagreed with her and told her an anecdote from my past. Back in the 1970s, my neighbor and good friend called me up one evening and asked if I would like to meet her mother, for whom she was throwing a small party. Now, my neighbor had a cousin with whom I had gone to college, and he had told me about what an absolute witch his aunt was, so I did not go there expecting to meet some sweet old lady.

I noticed the television was playing, even as the party was going on. At one point a commercial came on for some household product (I forget what). It featured a montage of seemingly-happy housewives saying how delighted they were to have the product. It happened that one of the four women was black...no big deal, except when the ad was done, my neighbor's mother proclaimed that she wasn't going to buy no product that was advertised on the teevee by no black person...except she didn't say "black person."

I bring this incident up because, for years and years, the people in the advertising business were more afraid or what a handful of hateful people thought than they were interested in trying to get minorities involved with the products they were selling. It took people like Jones and Cosby to convince the admen, once and for all, that capable people of their race could get the job done, and very well at that.

The point was, getting back to my acting colleague, that Jones was not prostituting himself with the ads he did. He was reaching out to give his fellow black performers the opportunity to prostitute themselves, the same way white actors had been doing for decades.

7. Ernie Kovacs for Dutch Masters Cigars.

Yes, yes, I know: CIGARS ARE BAD FOR YOU, okay? As I said earlier, this is not an article about products I like, use or endorse. It is about well-crafted celebrity ad campaigns.

In the late 1950s, Ernie Kovacs may have been the hippest dude on the boob tube. He had a comedy show (in 1958) that was billed as being "10⅝ Years Ahead of its Time." Along with his live-wire wife, Edie Adams, they were one of the coolest couples of the decade.

Kovacs' main sponsor was Dutch Masters cigars, and the great thing about the ad campaigns they built around the entertainer was that they stepped back and let Ernie be Ernie. Somehow, throughout all the zaniness, the viewer was able to keep track of the product. Here is an example that I particularly liked.

6. The "I'd Rather Go Naked" Models for P.E.T.A.

This is the only print ad campaign on my list and the only public-service one as well. It is also the only one on the list that does not focus on a single celebrity. Rather, it features a number of models, actresses and other entertainers, modestly nude around the caption, "I'd rather go naked than wear fur." Such celebrities as Christina Applegate, Sadie Frost, Khloe Kardashian, Eva Mendes and Christy Turlington have posed for the ads. They are fun to look at (from my point of view) and very effective. Since the campaign began, do you know how many furs I have purchased? NOT ONE!

I think the campaign is still running, and, if so, then I would pose the question to the likes of Heather Graham, Jayma Mays, Anne Hathaway and Jane Krakowski: are you also not outraged by the slaughter of animals for their fur?

5. Bob Ueker for Miller Lite

In general, Miller Lite has put out some of the best ads in the entire panorama of television. I remember a really great one, spoofing the movie, Night of the Living Dead, where the zombies are relentlessly advancing, chanting, "Miller Lite! Miller Lite!" in their zombie voices.

Ueker was one of a number of ex-athletes (most of them, not particularly distinguished) who made these fun commercials. Here is the best of the bunch.

It is probably a good thing for it that the company was able to put on such good ads, because their product is, without question, the worst light beer I have ever had the misfortune to taste.

4. Garrison Keillor for Bebop-a-Rebop Rhubarb Pie

Okay, nobody said the products had to be real, right? This is the only entry dedicated to fictitious items, and it includes more than Keillor's wonderful ads for the aforementioned pie. On his radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, which has been airing since the 1970s, Garrison Keillor has extolled the virtues of such fine institutions as Bertha's Kitty Boutique, The Café Berf (Boef), The Catchup (Ketchup) Advisory Board, Raw Bits Breakfast Cereal and Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery, as well as Bebop-a-Rebop Rhubarb Pie.

The reason why I singled out that last product is that the ads are probably the cleverest in the entire fictitious cornucopia of products. The product's great motto is: "Nothing gets the taste of shame and humiliation out of your mouth like Bebop-a-Rebop Ruhbarb Pie, which always follows some very funny, very cruel tale of woe that Keillor spins, leading up to the tag line. Here is a sample commercial for the product.

3. Tina Fey for American Express

This is a recent commercial, so you probably know what I'm talking about. It is based upon Ms. Fey's Emmy-Award-winning show, 30 Rock, and it is every bit as funny. In case you have forgotten how it goes, here it is.

2. Bernie Parent for Provident Bank (Philadelphia)

Bernie Parent (pronounced "pe RAUNT"), was a star goalie, presently enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame. In his two best seasons with the Philadelphia Flyers (in which they won back-to-back championships), he was just about unstoppable, racking up 24 shutouts, plus an additional six in the playoffs.

In 1975, after the Flyers had won their second straight title, almost every merchant in Philadelphia was scrambling to get Flyers players to endorse their stuff. The most popular of the players on the team was center Bobby Clarke. Probably the second most popular athlete was Bernie. What some of these merchants seem to have overlooked was that poor Bernie may have taken a few too many pucks to the head and teeth, back in the days before helmeted goalies, because he sounded as punchy as any prizefighter.

Nevertheless, Provident Bank wanted him for their really crappy promotion, where, if you deposited a huge amount of money for a long time in a non-interest-bearing account, you got a "free" Philadelphia Flyers warm-up jacket. Wowie, zowie, where is the line for that one?

Since Bernie was a French Canadian, they allowed him to open the ad for the free warm-up jacket in what passed for his native language. I wish I could find a recording of it somewhere, but here is something like the way it sounded phonetically:

"Bangeaw Provuhnun e ganye suh jakee libkth!" (Banquez au Provident et gagne ce jaket libre.).

"That's right, Bernie..." the slick spokesman for the bank goes on to say, as though he's the goalie's best bud. The spokesman then lays out the ridiculous deal and closes with the reminder, "And remember..." (CUT TO BERNIE'S VOICE)

"Itth Beuuunieth Bank!"

Have you ever run across something that was so incredibly awful that it was great? Well, this is as fine and example of that as I have ever found. The ad ran over and over again on the radio, and I never got tired of listening to it.

1. Bo Jackson for Nike

This ad first ran during the 1990 All-Star Baseball Game. When I saw it, I actually fell off the couch laughing. It got stale in a big hurry, and attempts to vary it were never all that clever, but, if you never heard the ad, you will be in for a treat if you check out this clip that incorporates the original ad.

There you have my list of the ten best. I am glad this content call asked for the best ads, because, if they had asked for the worst, I might have been hard-pressed to limit myself to only ten.

Sources

YouTube

Wikipedia

Own observation