Meet Jeff Sexton, one of the brainiest men I’ve ever met who also happens to be one of my Wizard of Ads partners.  Jeff is today’s guest blogger, on a topic that hits home when it comes to what advertising will look like in the coming decade.  Read on and you’ll see why I’m so lucky to float in his orbit.  And for some other mind-blowing posts, check him out at GrokDotCom.  Welcome, Jeff!

An Interesting Look at a New Style of Celebrity Ad

By Jeff Sexton

Before this, I’d never seen a Celebrity ad that wasn’t either an explicitly stated or implied endorsement.

You know: something along the lines of “Hi, I’m Tiger Woods and I drive a Buick [because **cough*** that’s what I’d naturally pick to drive even if I wasn’t being paid enormous amounts of money to do so ***cough***].”

Or something “lower key” like a picture of Pierce Brosnan wearing an Omega dive watch, and the ad itself utterly without any kind of explicit claims but implying something along the lines of “masculine manly-men like James Bond wear Omega watches, and you can show [or get] your he-man qualities by doing the same.”

This ad was different.  Take a look:

This is the first ad I’ve ever seen where the celebrity was nothing more than a reality hook.  Sure, one can’t help but seeing Beckham amidst the sea of copy surrounding him.  But the ad is for a Sharpie pen, and Beckham is neither using the pen nor explicitly endorsing it.

Placed in a women’s magazine, the ad does nothing more than refer to Beckham as what he obviously is, a male sex symbol.  And then it uses that shared reality to poke fun of the reader for reading the ad copy about the Sharpie pen instead of enjoying the picture of Beckham.

That’s it.  No endorsement.  Just a way to grab the reader’s attention while connecting with her (through a humorous reality hook) and to very subtly make the message seem more important than it is – because it has to be pretty important if she’ll ignore Beckham’s picture to read it, right?

Genius.

But more than that, too.  This ad talks to you like a friend; it borrows the language of intimacy and uses it brilliantly.

And it does all that while expressing a profound shift in societal values from an Idealist generation to a Civic one.  So if you haven’t read Roy Williams explanation of this phenomenon – of how 2003-2008 was a societal tipping point equal that of 1963-1968 – then go read those memos now.

In terms of the ad, the Civic outlook approaches Celebrity differently.  Celebrities aren’t idolized.  They’re not larger than life.  And no, their appearance in an ad doesn’t contain magical powers that they can be transferred onto the product.

In a Civic Generation, celebrities just acknowledged for what they are: famous for something.  Beckham is famous as a Soccer player, but even more so as a sex symbol.  So the ad simply acknowledges that.  To do otherwise would be passé, and so NOT ‘keepin’ it real.’

Is your marketing in touch with this societal shift?  Are you using the language of intimacy and keepin’ it real?