The latest in advert fashion seems to be having an American thriller/action star being themselves (but not themselves) in high-budget ad campaigns for British businesses. This Americafile attitude towards advertising seems to have started with good ol’ Kevin Bacon for EE and whilst he can’t really be described as an action superhero (dancing superhero, sure) he does seem to have set a president for other UK-based companies to get some Hollywood clout behind their British businesses.
Now my favourite has to be the Harvey Keitel’s/Winston Wolfe’s Direct Line adverts, only because of the palpable sense of disappointment one feels when his mafia style innuendoes turn out to be just about making car dents disappear, instead of the perpetrator. Who hasn’t felt a certain yearning for revenge when coming across a dent that some kind person has left in the side of your car before conveniently forgetting to leave their insurance details as they speed off out of the car park and on with the rest of their sunny day? I feel that the victim of car injury in this advert perfectly sums up my low-level sense of disappointment that Winston isn’t going to find said irresponsible driver and at least rinse them down with a cold hose in true Wolfe style…
Now that Sylvester Stallone has jumped on the perhaps-they’ve-spent-all-their-millions-already bandwagon with Warburton’s new ad campaign (I’m just going to go ahead and say that I’d prefer Sam Warburton to take full advantage of his name – and I bet they’ve asked) as well as Arnie Schwarzenegger with Compare the Market, I’m pretty sure we can expect the rest of The Expendables to join in any day now – actually scrap that, Jason Statham has the misfortune to be British. What bets are we placing on Robert De Niro?
