Now that I’m officially paying attention to advertising for this site, I find that I’m just collecting a crap load of material without really knowing how it will all fit together.  A lot of times, I’ll just pick one ad and go to town on it; sometimes, I’ll group stuff together because it kind of makes sense.  These two ads in the latter category because, I have no friggin idea why National Car Rental and Sony chose these people to be in their ads.

The first up on this little Q&A session is John McEnroe in a National Care Rental spot:

If you’re big on trivia, that “You can not be serious!” line McEnroe does here was originally directed toward an umpire during a match at Wimbledon in 1981.  I bring that up, because, it happened in 1981 and there’s a good chance you’re one of the many people in the world that could give a shit about tennis.

How they hell did John McEnroe and rental cars even come up?

CLIENT: So, we need a new ad for 2008, something that talks about the fact that you can just walk onto the lot like a pimp and take any car without having to go to the counter.

AGENCY: Easy enough, that practically sells itself…

CLIENT: Oh, and put John McEnroe in it.

AGENCY: Sure, we can… what?

CLIENT: Put John McEnroe in the ad.

AGENCY: Why?  What does John McEnroe have to do with National?

CLIENT: Not a thing, but we have him and have to use him or it’s a big waste of money, so, chop chop.

AGENCY: Shit.

Now, imagine that same conversation, but now stick in an even lessen known entity, Julia Allison:

Sony – Holiday – Julia Allison

I originally captured this ad because of that piece of crap joke that Julia says early on, “I mean, I spend more time online than a pop-up window” – ZING!  Wow, that’s some topical humor there.  I don’t know if Sony, the agency, or Julia wrote that winner, but somebody needs to go back to writing copy for canned peas or realize that pop ups haven’t really been an issue for about two years.

I have to admit, I had to go look up who Julia Allison was at first.  I know, I’m a horrible blogger if I don’t know the name of another blogger when I see it, but I’m still kind of new at this and would not have ever encountered her elsewhere.  She apparently got her start writing for a few small rags in New York and really started to take off while she was at Time Out New York writing a dating advice column. Like I said, I didn’t know who she was either, but this guy over at bnet, who saw it coming way back in August, says she has a rep for being famous for just being famous (btw, Jim, “In the field of being famous for absolutely no other reason than wanting to be famous, Allison is indisputably a leader.” I would dispute that in a heartbeat, Paris Hilton will own that for years to come.).  She’s apparently been on all kinds of chat shows and stuff and now it’s really starting to bug me that I didn’t know the hell she was before I had to write this entry.  Oh and Sony, I’m kind of the target market for that ad, sooooooo.

I have yet to work with a “celebrity” in any advertising I’ve ever worked on, so I can only imagine what the process of obtaining celebrity talent must be like.  For instance, is there a big list of media whores and/or people who need money to pay off the IRS that would gladly put what little dignity they have left to sell laptops and car rental services?  Plus, these two can’t have been at the top of the list.  I mean, they can’t have even been on the top of the list of people who weren’t busy that day.

Was it about the money?  McEnroe couldn’t have come cheap, but it sounds like Allison would have been in it just for access to the craft services table that day.  Sony’s using some pretty big names in the rest of their ads, but you can start to see where the budget started to run out… Manning, Timberlake, Sedaris, little girl, then, ummmmm, Allison, yeah, we have enough for her.  Damn kid probably almost fucked it up for her that day.  Close call, Jules.

J.