I'm Also A Client...

If you have been watching as much of the NBA playoffs as I have, I'm sure you have seen the new commercial for Buick featuring Shaquille O'Neal. In it, Shaq talks about how roomy the new Buick sedan is, even squeezing himself into one to prove the point. The problem is that once he is inside Shaq doesn't look particularly comfortable. I'm only slightly taller than the average person, but even I have had enough trouble finding a roomy car to know where to look to see if there really is enough legroom for someone. They key thing is where the knees are. If you can bend you knees and they are still mostly underneath the dashboard, you've got enough legroom. The closer your knees and elbows are to the same place the more you may want to start looking for a vehicle more suited to your size. In this particular brand of Buick, Shaq's knees are on either side of the steering wheel and he's reclining so much to hide this fact he is almost in the back seat. Even with his wingspan I think he would have a hard time comfortably reaching the steering wheel to drive. Also, the cynical side of me has to point out that we never saw Shaq get in or out of the car. For all we know it took three tubes of WD-40 and a shoehorn to shove him inside.

Using an extreme situation just to prove a point in a commercial is nothing new. There is actually a long tradition of it - from Sumo wrestlers with wrist watches taped to their bellies banging into one another to see if the watches will keep on ticking to guys hanging by their hardhats off tall buildings thanks to the benefits of nothing but Super-Glue, there is no limit to how far ad people are willing to go to make their products look awesome. Still, cars commercials might just take it further than any other products. These ad people love to do things which have almost no real-world applications but look very cool. How often do you see trucks towing 20 tons of raw steel just to prove that pulling your boat isn't going to be a problem? Some of the things these car ads want us to believe their vehicles can do are rather far-fetched, as evidence by the fact that there have been numerous episode of "Mythbusters" featuring nothing but the gang trying to recreate commercials and see if it is even physically for these cars to do some of moves which have been advertised. That is why this is not the first time a car company has tried to use a basketball player to market their car as roomy and I doubt it will be the last. 

Still, you have to admit, at 7'1" and 350 (at least) lbs, Shaq is an odd choice for a mid-sized car spokesman. Honestly, how many viewers are going to say, "Well, if Shaq can fit than I am totally going to buy myself a Buick?" There simply aren't enough people in this country that are his size to justify hiring Shaq for this commercial. I can only assume that Buick was still stinging from losing Tiger Woods all those years ago and Shaq was the biggest sports name they could get since Barkley is busy doing weight loss ads and Payton Manning has too many commercials on his plate already. So, I get what Buick is trying to do, I just think they aimed too high. What I mean by that is just because you can get a very famous name to endorse your product doesn't mean you have to - credibility actually matters. When you go the celebrity endorsement route instead of having the car doing some kind of extreme stunt the car is no longer the star - it doesn't matter how comfortable or luxurious the car looks, it will take the proverbial back seat to the person driving it. That is why the biggest problem with this whole ad was that I don't believe Shaq would ever drive a Buick.

Say what you want about the power of the celebrity endorsement, but even in 2012 there are still plenty of people out there who could be swayed to purchase a product if they thought it was being used by one famous person or another. The key is to pick the right celebrity. People hate feeling as though they are being lied to, because then they start to worry just what else this company could be hiding. If you can't find someone convincing to talk about this item, than it probably really stinks. This is why I think companies should always go with actors over athletes, because they pretend for a living and will do a better job of convincing people that they actually have a preferred brand of vacuum, even though the truth is they haven't even touched one in a decade, as that is their maid's job. I could be persuaded to believe that Steven Tyler has eaten at Burger King in his lifetime- I just wouldn't get that same feeling of confidence if Louie Anderson was trying to sell me a treadmill. Still, even that would seem a lot more believable than Shaq trying to sell me a mid-sized sedan.