Brands have long sought to associate themselves with celebrities in the hope that some of the latter’s mojo would rub off on the former. The reasoning might go that if you love William Shatner and he says he loves our cola then you should love it too! Of course, the realities of marketing and advertising make that calculation much more complex and it’s sometimes that you want to associate your brand with the emotions that celebrity stirs and that cuts both ways, often with unpredictable results.
And so it seems with a recent campaign from French automakers Citroen. In a cheeky turn on the retro craze, Citroen positions themselves as “anti-retro” and leverages some words of wisdom from a personality whose legacy is both steeped in nostalgia and forward thinking: John Lennon…sort of.
