Amil Gargano was born in 1932.
In Detroit (Motor City ironically) in the middle of the depression.
In 1959 he began work in an agency called 'Campbell Ewald' where he met Carl Alley and went on to set up their own Agency with one client - the unknown Swedish car maker of all things, Volvo. It was the era of Madmen and Don Draper.
They also began to be recognised as a team creating great work and in 1963 produced one of the all time great American iconic campaigns "Drive it like you hate it".
In fact it launched Volvo in the US and sales went crazy.
This TV spot was aired too with a great endline 'cheaper than psychiatry' and became pretty famous.....and I've worked on cars (BMW/Mini/Suzuki) so I know the car is the star. And this campaign was using the classic marketing trick - demonstration...
So Google set about bringing this campaign into digital, into today and got Amil involved (looking good I have to say, for nearly 80).... In doing it they found, through Google Search, Irv Gordon a man with a 1966 1800S Volvo with, wait for it, nearly 3 million miles on the clock. So they thought that's interesting and went to meet Irv.
Here's how that all starts....
Now they have something magical. Great stories from 1962 and then they show how to apply it to online. I think they could have done better in some ways. Although the GPS tracker is great to follow IRV as is of course, the streaming video from his car (but they I would say that wouldn't I?).
Still, the idea is strong. Here is a further follow-up....
If you think about it, it's still great and the whole Project Brief is a smashing idea. I frankly prefer the Coke Hilltop idea which I blogged before (http://streamabout.blogspot.com/2012/03/ad-agencies-have-future-thanks-to.html
But it's pretty good to try and demonstrate to Ad people that the web can be a terrific medium and engender goodwill. In other words, stop them bitching.
Which of course, if you're watching posts and blogs, they haven't. They've used this to criticise Google for making a mess of a classic Ad campaign.
Interesting too that these beautiful films are on Google's YouTube which I blogged yesterday (http://streamabout.blogspot.com/2012/03/youtube-is-new-tv-keep-calm-people.html).
Ah well, you can take a horse to water.
One last thing. Amil was inducted into Advertising's Hall of Fame in 1983 and well, here he was.
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