London agency WCRS likes a celeb. Back in the days when founder Robin Wight was a mere stripling it made its debut for BMW with a true turkey starring Kirk Douglas. This ad has mysteriously disappeared.
But BMW forgave it and WCRS went on to create ‘the Ultimate Driving Machine,’ still by far the best campaign BMW has produced.
More recently for Sky it lined up a stellar line-up of thesps including Al Pacino, Bruce Willis and Michael Caine – with varying degrees of success.
Now it’s trying the same schtick with Sylvester Stallone for Warburtons, with ‘The Deliverers.’ Better than that, it’s got the client, John Warburton, in there too and also gained gained lots of pre-campaign publicity when Sly visited Warburtons’ home town of Bolton.
So what could possibly go wrong?
Actually, not very much. And such ads will be off the scale in terms of awareness.
Doesn’t actually say much about the bread but Warburtons seems to have a near monopoly on third party bread brands in the UK’s supermarkets so it seems to have got its trade marketing right. Stallone presumably helps it stand out from the own label stuff.
MAA creative scale: 6
Hello Stephen,
Whilst WCRS created many great ads for BMW, “The Ultimate Driving Machine,” was coined at Ammarati & Puris in New York. (I’m rather fond of “Engineered Like No Other Car in the World,” myself.)
BTW: The late Stan Freberg made his name creating radio commercials. Dig some out – they were bloody brilliant and a source of inspiration for us old farts who grew up writing ads for steam radio.
Cheers,
Robert.