Dead Spokesman Pitching
Probably seemed like a slam-dunk to the creative team. Resurrect a popular countercultural celebrity, put her in close proximity to the product and let the amused double-takes begin: So how come so many people seemed a bit put-off by the faux-Gilda Radner ad in Armstrong's It Only Looks Like The Real Thing campaign. It's not the clumsy wording, which seems to refer to a beloved entertainer as an "it;" there's something more going on here, a reaction unprovoked by their other ads which paired laminated flooring with celebrity impersonators like Lucille Ball and James Dean: Then, probably because the client realized that they'd fallen into a rut using SpokesImpersonators stuck in the 1950s, at attempt was made the "freshen" the campaign with a more modern icon -- at least as modern as a late-1970s icon could be. Gilda Radner (of Saturday Night Live's original cast, for those who don't know) probably came to mind as a complement to Lucy's