This is one of my favorite recent ads. It's from the UK and it's for Heinz ketchup. Notice that they don't even show the bottle (until the very end) or mention it. Ketchup bottles are such an ordinary part of our lives that just a few hand motions and a shot of where most people keep it in the fridge is all it needs to sell it. I also love the bit with the knife. We've all been there.
This month we're taking a look at celebrities who did TV commercials.
Whenever you get into any profession, you have to start at the bottom. The TV business is no exception. The stars you see in prime time today probably cut their teeth working in TV commercials. Heck, some of them still do TV commercials even after they become big stars (but it's often overseas...shhhhhhhh).
After the jump, a sampling of TV commercials from years ago that star celebrities who are now household names. If you're old enough to remember these commercials, you'll probably say to yourself, "Oh yeah, I remember this ad, but I didn't realize that he was in it!"
Some TV commericals just fade away, and you can't even remember what product they were pitching. But some commercials are just burned into your brain.
This is one of those commericals. It must be on dozens of videotapes I have of old TV shows. I remember this like it aired yesterday, even though it's 20 years old. It's a Heinz ketchup commercial, with an-oh-so-hip-in-an-80s-way guy tilts a bottle of ketchup on the roof of a building, then walking all calm and cool down the stairs to the street and getting a hot dog in his hand just before the thick, rich ketchup falls from the bottle. He even gets the girl at the end! Oh, and the dude went on to have a role in a TV show you might have heard of. (And the music! "Jane's Getting Serious!" Whoa, flashback.)
Personaly, I think the ketchup pours a little bit too neatly, considering it fell from a few stories. (Check out the video after the jump.)