BY LEWIS LAZARE of the Chicago Sun-times
It promises to be quite the show. White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen and Cubs manager Lou Piniella are teaming up in a new wave of television commercials from Media Nexus/Chicago for the Chicagoland and Northwest Indiana Chevy Dealers Association.
The Guillen-Piniella campaign marks the first dedicated ad campaign for the Chevy dealers association in nearly a decade. The deal to pair the two high-profile and often outspoken local sports figures was done by Media Nexus CEO Mike Demaio, who brought the local Chevy dealers account to his shop earlier this spring.
Demaio and his agency shot four spots with Guillen and Piniella, the first of which will begin airing Wednesday, a couple of days in advance of the always hard-fought series of games between the Cubs and White Sox that begin Friday at Wrigley Field. The first spot will play off the campaign’s core “Best Friends Forever” theme.
In that debut commercial, we will see Guillen and Piniella doing a lot of things best friends might do together in and around Chicago, including bouncing up and down on a trampoline, jumping rope and fishing off the North Michigan Avenue bridge. Demaio said voiceover copy related to the Chevy brand will be interwoven with the material featuring Piniella and Guillen. The general point of the Chevy-focused aspect of the ads will be that even rivals agree that certain Chevy car deals are unrivaled.
A second spot expected to debut Friday will be what Demaio describes as a “rap-off,” with Piniella and Guillen each offering up a specially composed rap song. The mind reels at the thought of how this will play out from a purely musical standpoint. But whatever its merits musically, the commercial is sure to attract plenty of attention.
