automotive

Famed Sportscasters Do Play-by-Play In Sentra Ads

Nissan got buzz last year for its campaign around the 2012 model of its Sentra compact car. The campaign featured an attention-grabbing ad in which a young apparatchik drives his company’s executives to a meeting. In the ad, each exec has a higher impression of his position based on the car. The spot was mimicked in a Vine video that got some traction, to which Nissan created its own Vine meme. 

Now there’s a slate of new humorous ads comprising three new spots (two of which debut this summer) featuring college sportscasters Kirk Herbstreit and Brent Musburger doing voiceover play-by-play, complete with stadium-crowd noises in the background as Sentra-focused dramas unfold.

In one spot, a guy is going to meet his girlfriend's parents for the first time. The dad waits out on the stoop, looking generally ready to grab the blunderbuss. Musburger and Herbstreit comment about the dour patriarch: "This guy’s a pro. A real gatekeeper.” The father sees that the boyfriend is driving the Sentra as the car pulls up. Musburger plays narrator: “Dad did not see this coming!” The boyfriend relaxes when he sees the father's point of view change when he sees the car. 

advertisement

advertisement

In another spot, a guy returns to his car, where his date is waiting for him to get gelato. As he’s about to hand a cup of ice cream to his girlfriend, he looks up to admire a red Sentra, from which a pretty woman emerges. His girlfriend notices him ogling, thinking he’s admiring the woman. She locks the doors. That ad will run in general market, Chinese TV. The ad about the father will, per Nissan, be the focus of the African-American TV buy.

In April, the company launched a Facebook campaign touting the car with actor Omar Epps. The campaign, "Impress with Sentra," also via the Los Angeles office of AOR TBWA\Chiat\Day, allows people to upload video in which  they can include Epps, who lavishes praise upon the person who uploaded the film. The Franklin, Tenn.-based automaker, which does a lot of music-based sponsorship in nearby Nashville, will bring its NV200 mobile guitar repair shop -- via a partnership with Gibson -- to the North American Music Manufacturers show in the city this week.

Next story loading loading..