McKinney launched a new campaign for CarMax starring Andy Daly of Comedy Central’s Review* titled “Drive What’s Possible.”
The campaign focuses on the low-stress process of auto buying and selling that sets CarMax apart. In “Tiger,” Daly carves a large wooden tiger (because “a real one would maul me”) named Dr. Whiskers. The wooden sculpture is intended to show that “CarMax associates will not pounce like tigers…because people don’t like that.”
In “Seven Stages,” Daly outlines the “seven stages of decisioining” while promoting CarMax’s seven day proposal period for considering their offer on your used car: Consideration, Questioning, Deciding, Queso, Nap, Sudoku and Tambourine Practice. “Leather Crafting” sees Daly promoting the chain’s 5 day money-back guarantee on all its cars, as well as the merits of leather. While not likely to leave viewers in hysterics, there’s something to be said for Daly’s dry humor and how the spots relate it to actual CarMax selling points and a larger brand philosophy.
“We wanted to help put consumers at ease and here’s this guy, this character that Andy plays, and it felt like a good fit because he can be really funny and disarming but he’s also very earnest,” CarMax CEO Jim Lyskitold Adweek. “The brand is never the punchline; it’s kind of that self-deprecation that he helps provide and so the humor is a bit disarming but his earnestness helps reinforce the seriousness of this decision for consumers.”
“For three days, we worked on site at the Oxnard, California, CarMax with a team of hundreds, including McKinney creatives and producers, shooting a number of spots,” added director Shawn Levy. “And they have a tone that I think, because they show Andy being Andy, is going to really land with audiences.”
*Editor’s note: Review is the best sitcom on TV right now. Just throwing that out there.
CarMax has handed media duties over to Horizon following a competitive review, sources told Adweek.
The review for the assignment, previously handled in-house, also included finalists OMD and Vizeum. It follows the selection of new CMO Jim Lyski last August, and a competitive review which handed creative duties to McKinney in November. According to Kantar Media, CarMax spends around $70 million on media annually.
With a cute canine-powered commercial from Budweiser chewing up its competition ahead of the big game, I decided to ask dog expert Brian Hare why a pooch is so often an adman's best friend.
"We share a lot of history with dogs that we do not share with any other animal," says Hare. "We've been evolving together for tens of thousands of years. This creates a special connection that is unique to our two species."
Judging from his pedigree, Hare should know. He serves as the director of the Canine Cognition Center at Duke University and co-founder of Dognition, a service dedicated to helping pet owners understand how their dogs think. (Ad shop McKinney helped create the service and its website.) With his wife, Vanessa Woods, Hare co-wrote The New York Times' best-seller The Genius of Dogs.
Sure, dogs are cute, but Hare believes there are deeper reasons that consumers respond so strongly, and in such positive ways, to ad campaigns that feature these animals.
"When you see a dog," he says, "it's not like looking at a tiger or a shark. It's like looking at someone familiar, someone you know and recognize. This sense of familiarity and comfort is very valuable to advertising."
That's certainly true for Budweiser's "Puppy Love," a 60-second commercial from Anomaly that tells the tale of a 10-week-old puppy who keeps escaping from an adoption center and cozying up to the Clydesdales on a nearby farm. The spot debuted on Wednesday's Today show, and in just over 30 hours online, "Puppy Love" is nearing 20 million YouTube views, making it by far the most-watched 2014 Super Bowl ad released prior to the game. It's also fetching massive feel-good buzz for the brand in social and mainstream media.
"This year's Budweiser commercial with the Clydesdales and puppy creates a very heartwarming story, pulling out all the stops and using our relationship with both of these animals very effectively," Hare says. "Seeing a dog brings up positive feelings that no other animal can to the same extent. Horses convey power and grace."
Overall, he says, the puppy-horse combo creates "incredibly strong positive feelings around the brand."
Hare maintains that no other critters meet advertiser needs quite like dogs (real ones, not CGI-created Doberman-Chihuahua hybrids on a rampage). He says the combination of cuteness and familiarity helps bowsers win every time, even over the cotton-tailed charms of bunnies. (Perhaps a surprising assertion from a guy named Hare.)
Should some animals be barred from ads entirely? "Depending on the ad's intent, snakes are something to be wary of." Hare's also no fan of primates in commercials "because the abuse of chimpanzees is well documented within the entertainment industry."
So what about the Internet's favorite animal, the cat?
The feline fiends inexplicably get a couple of showcases on Sunday They'll hiss and spit, I imagine, across Hallmark Channel's Kitten Bowl, and cough up hairballs on Animal Planet's Kitty Half-Time Show—which is just an intermission during the cable network's Puppy Bowl anyway.
According to Hare: "Even though cats have also been companion animals for thousands of years, our relationship with dogs seems to be particularly extraordinary in comparison. Research shows that dogs can read our gestures, feel our emotions and even sense changes in our health better than most cats."
There, science proves it: When it comes to ads at least, cats aren't up to scratch.
It's the eternal Super Bowl conundrum: Make a funny ad with people, or make a funny ad with puppies? If you're CarMax, you do both.
For its first Super Bowl appearance since 2011's "Kid in a Candy Store," the auto retailer and agency Silver + Partners have created a game-day spot called "Slow Clap," along with a Web version called "Slow Bark" that re-creates the ad shot for shot with puppies.
"The task came down to what we could do to get people engaged with the ad in advance of the game," Laura Donahue, CarMax vp of creative marketing, tells Adweek. "The agency came to us with a strategy of increasing buzz and conversation about the brand: What if CarMax was the first advertiser who remade a game-day commercial with an all-furry cast?"
In "Slow Clap," we see a CarMax customer driving home in his new car, while a wide array of characters line the street to give him solemn applause in the vein of a Hollywood sports drama. He passes cheerleaders, competitive pie eaters, a park ranger with a bear and several more, including a cameo from Sean Astin reprising his 1993 role from Rudy.
In "Slow Bark," we see pretty much all the same stuff, but with dogs. And judging by how many times my children just made me replay the clip for them while writing this up, it's probably going to be a hit.
Harold Einstein at Station Film directed the human version; Ronnie Koff of Imaginary Forces directed the puppy version.
Donahue says she'd be OK with the puppy version of the ad becoming a bigger YouTube success than the actual Super Bowl version. Both online iterations of the ad are 45 seconds, while the edit you'll see during the game is a :30.
"I will feel excited about any of our combined efforts around the Super Bowl that generate enthusiasm around our brand," Donahue says. "Whether it's the puppy version or the extended version of the ad running online, any of those outcomes is great."
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