Applebee's resurrects commercial use of dead celebrities I've been operating under the perhaps mistaken impression that at some point in the last decade the ad industry came to a collective decision that it would no longer use dead celebrities in TV commercials. (Soundtracks featuring vocals of dead celebrities aside.) Then I saw this Applebee's commercial (click on "watch TV spot") yesterday which uses Sammy Davis Jr., or an amazing facsimile, in an attempt to transform the restaurant into—I think—a Las Vegas hipster steak joint. (Sure, the Rat Pack would definitely hang at Applebee's if its members were alive today.) As in those long-ago Diet Coke ads, which are the most famous of the dead celebrities genre, the dead celebrity is incorporated, in black-and-white, into the action as though he were still alive! To what effect, it's hard to say. —Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

May 5, 2006 | Permalink

Comments

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How much crack does it take to fuel the creative minds who come up with stuff like this? I mean, really. Do people have no shame?

Posted by: ming the merciless | May 5, 2006 11:33:58 AM

Well while you are right on the money with the majority of your commentary....I have to say I don't believe the Rat Pack would hang at Applebee's. Morton's sure but Applebee's no.

Posted by: K.W.Murphy | May 5, 2006 11:54:59 AM

to clear up any confusion, I was kidding when I said that I thought the Rat Pack would hang out at Applebee's.Frank Sinatra at the salad bar? I don't think so.

Posted by: Catharine P. Taylor | May 5, 2006 12:14:16 PM

I don't have a problem with the use of Sammy Davis Jr. But I am truly disappointed in this follow up effort from Applebee's. It doesn't have the magic or joie de vie of the previous Gilligan's Island parody.

Give me a man playing the stand up bass while standing in three feet of Pacific Brown. And another man with a flapping flounder on his head.

Please Applebee's, you had greatness, don't walk away from it.

Posted by: rich siegel | May 5, 2006 12:40:45 PM

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