Buick Can’t Get It Up

No matter how hard Buick tries, it just can’t get it’s audience up for its brand. Always to be known as the car hat-wearing grandfathers drive, the brand, with the help of McCann Erickson, Detroit is trying to erect limp sales by having a hot chick dance seductively, complete with headlight to “headlight” camera pan, around the “always chic, always flattering, all new” LaCrosse. While the spot hopes to align the imagery of the vehicle with the imagery a woman imagines of herself when looking in the mirror, it’s likely to leave guys in a state of semi-get-the-car-get-the-girl-delusion wondering what a hot chic is doing in a Buick.

Anyway, in this week’s Ad Age TV Spots of the Week, Joan Rivers wants to make sure she waxes her butt in a spot with daughter Melissa for their new TV Guide show; a turtle carries a can of Diet Coke on its back because it, somehow, it helps him love life; a bunch of guys demonstrate sports watching idiocy for Pepsi Wild Cherry; and PalmOne gives us a very basic but very informative spot for its Treo. New year. Same stuff. OK, so all these spots were created last year. We’ll be patient.

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Steve Hall

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