You are now entering Ad Space, a realm of commercials, brought before us so we might examine how they work, and discuss why we both love and hate them so. So it is written …
The Product:
Nespresso coffee
The Promotion:
The Pitch:
This started as a Twins sequel, but we had to recast Schwarzenegger. Then Clooney insisted on some Nespresso product placement … things sort of snowballed, and here we are.
One of the old advertising adages is that you don’t sell people on a product – you sell them on the lifestyle the product represents. And Nespresso leans into that hard.
Its message is clear: Nespresso is the beverage of handsome, sophisticated, effortlessly cool silver-foxes like Mr. George Clooney. An ordinary slob would need to go through an intense process of Clooneyfication to become worthy of imbibing Nespresso – and, conversely, if you’re someone who aspires to Clooneyhood, surely you must purchase Nespresso to make the transformation complete?
But what’s amusing is who they have as the ordinary schmuck who Clooney must guide to Nespressovana. They could have just hired some random actor who had the right look and mannerisms to play an average-dude loser. Instead … they went with Danny DeVito.
That’s Danny DeVito, star of stage and screen, multi-millionaire, winner of Emmy, Tony, and Golden Globe awards – plus, voice of the Lorax, who speaks for the trees! Most people would consider achieving DeVitohood to be a high and mighty goal in and of itself. To have Danny DeVito, playing themself, be the joe schmoe who needs to reach a higher station in life … it seems like an odd choice.
It works, of course, because DeVito’s stage persona has always been that of crass, squalid, no-account scumbags. Whether playing Louie De Palma on Taxi or Frank Reynolds on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, or a hundred roles in between, DeVito’s specialty has been characters who may or may not be successful, but who conduct themselves in such a loutish manner, they’ll always be lowlifes no matter how much cash they have to throw around.
So if you want to suggest that, even in the august halls of Hollywood superstardom, there are those who need the teachings of Clooney in order to climb the Olympian hills and drink of the divine nectar known as Nespresso … yeah, you can’t do much better than Danny DeVito.