Did Anyone See the new Ford Commercial with Steve McQueen?

[thedailyshow]

I thought I was watching an old Steve McQueen movie, except the camera pulled back to show a new car, and Steve was getting into it. I'm amazed at the extent of digital manipulation, and it feels so wrong to use Steve McQueen like that. Steve McQueen's one of my favorite movie stars....and what a sacrilege to use him like that!

[Paradise]

1. Couldn't help loving seeing him but I get your point. n/t

[TexasBushwhacker]

2. Yeah, it seems weird to me too

I've seen other commercials done that way. I remember one with Marilyn Monroe. Obviously someone owns the rights to use the deceased's likeness and is free to sell them, or maybe whoever owns the rights to the film that they used a clip from is the one that's selling the priviledge to use the image. In either case, I'm not sure that, as a commercial, it's really doing what it's supposed to do, which is SELL THAT CAR (or whatever). It's so startling to see Steve McQueen climbing into that new car that you tend to forget that it's a Camaro (or whatever car it is). I know I don't remember what Marilyn Monroe was selling, just that it was Marilyn Monroe.

[GOPisEvil]

3. You think they did that without consulting McQueen's estate?

If you're angry, be angry at them. Ford's marketing idea was a good one.

[Zomby Woof]

6. I can be angry with both

Ford sucks anyway, but if this is the best they can do, using an image of a dead celebrity in order to mine people's nostalgia/admiration for that person and link it to their POS car, then fuck 'em both!

Jeezus, David, I thought you knew commercials are fucking poison. All of them.

[GOPisEvil]

10. Well, to sell that product, it's a good idea.

I don't have to like it, but it's a clever idea.

Of course commericals are poison, but they can still be clever ideas.

[Zomby Woof]

13. It's not even clever!

This idea was done to death with Fred Astaire a few years ago, and Apple using Einstein, etc... Oh, and IBM using a Charlie Chaplin imitator back in the 80's (if digital techology was advanced enough, I am sure they would TRIED the real Chaplin - a Communist by the way, lol).

I am not easily impressed with marketing. I worked in close proximity to the industry back in Seattle, and it is full of idiots who mainly rip off others. It takes a LOT for me to think toxic ads are creative.

If you start defending Old Navy ads, I will fly to Austin and kick your ass, Skittles-style! :P

[GOPisEvil]

15. I agree with Fred Astaire and Einstein...

However one of Steve McQueen's movies featured a car chase with him in a Mustang, a car providing styling cues to the current design. So, while it may have been an easy dot to connect, it's fairly clever, for the average advertising moran.

Old Navy ads are tools of Satan.

[Zomby Woof]

16. LOL!

Wait, I am Satan... um, shit. :crazy:

[Zomby Woof]

4. it's creepy and necrophilic

Using a dead guy to sell a car that didn't exist when he was alive... just fucking moronic and what I expect from the criminals at Ford.

This is capitalism at its worst... exploiting corpses. Shitty marketing and proof that the field is creatively bankrupt. They did this with Fred Astaire and vacuums a few years ago. Corpses selling products is so 1999.

[KG]

7. the mustang didn't exist when he was alive?

[Zomby Woof]

8. I thought someone said it was a Camaro

Digitized. Which made me suspicious because those are made by GM. If they used a clip of him hopping into a POS Mustang, without digitizing, it's still creatively void and idiotic.

[KG]

12. seemed a neat tie-in since steve will be forever remembered for

his chase scene thru the hills of san fransico driving a mustang in the movie 'bullitt'

i'll always remember the VW they pass about five times.

[AlCzervik]

17. here it is

whenever i'm driving in sanfrancisco i always think of that car chase.

[KG]

19. that was a righteous ride!

[AlCzervik]

21. oh yeah, i'd love to have an old fastback.

[CO Liberal]

20. We Showed "Bullit" on Movie Night at Devry Tech

I was running the projector, and that chase takes place at the end of Reel 2. (This was 1972, in the days before VCRs.)

When the chase was over, I stopped the projector, put it in reverse, and we watched the entire chase scene backwards, then watched it forward again. :-)

[LynneSin]

5. Steve McQueen is also selling I believe Tag Hauer watches

Go figure

:shrug:

[Zomby Woof]

9. I beats paying a living actor

The real reason: Paying an estate is cheaper and easier. No pain-in-the-ass actors to worry about, no SAG regulations to comply with, etc...

[Deja Q]

18. Talented people turned into profitable property. Doesn't it make you

feel good to be an American? :shrug:

[AlCzervik]

11. Not a fan of that one or the One where Gene Kelly is dancing

with a dirt devil?

[Zomby Woof]

14. Oh yeah!

Was it Kelly or Astaire? Both were great dancers/movie icons... either way, an idiotic ploy.

[Kahuna]

22. Yeah! What a major babe he was!

:smoke:

[lpbk2713]

23. The same thing was done with John Wayne a few years ago.

I forget what the product was but he was in a commercial not too long ago.

[Left Is Write]

24. I don't really like ad campaigns that use dead people.

I'm also not fond of posthumous "duets", unless the dead person specifically recorded his or her part with the INTENTION of using in a duet and just happened to die before it got mixed.

Unless I control the deceased's estate and/or name/image, I don't really have anything to say about it, but I don't have to like it.