Using celebrities or pop culture icons in advertising to draw attention to an ad is nothing new. I stumbled across a great example of this when I was on Digg.com today. There it was, an ad for Vandelay Industries - importing/exporting fine latex goods. Anytime I see the name Vandelay, I think of Seinfeld and pause to look closer. Imagine my surprise to see that this Vandelay Industries was referencing the same business George Costanza made up.
Turns out, the ad was for a T-shirt company that sells a Vandelay Industries T-shirt for all those Seinfeld fans out there like me. I still had to click on the ad and check out the online store, BustedTees, to see what else they had on their site. I figured if the store has a Vandelay Industries T-shirt, they must have some other funny items.
So what's the point of this story? The ad worked. Instead of using copy that focused on what BustedTees offered, it just used one of its T-shirt images in the ad, which catches the attention of every Seinfeld fan (and there are still a lot of them) who sees the ad. Not a bad way to generate some traffic to the BustedTees website. It certainly worked for me.
And in case you need a little Seinfeld/Vandelay Industries fix, here you go courtesy of YouTube.
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