It’s not rare for famous celebrities to show up in commercials in order to boost the popularity of both their own image as well as that of the product they’re promoting – plus it’s often good money for little work, according to most reports. And while it’s rare to see this done by high-ranking celebrities, sometimes this happens too – and often it’s obvious that the star is doing it for fun.
In the case of Sylvester Stallone, we recently got to see him in a commercial for a Warburtons bakery, leading many news sites to repeat the humorous phrase “First Bread” – an obvious pun on one of Stallone’s most famous movies, part of the “Rambo” series. And for what it’s worth, the ad was produced with a lot of taste and attention to detail, and was an enjoyable piece of marketing material in the first place.
In the ad, Stallone plays the role of a bread delivery guy resembling Rambo (or, as some have pointed out, it could also have been a reference to his Rocky character), determined to get his deliveries done on time. According to Tim Boxall, senior accountant director for WCRS, Warburtons pride themselves on the effort put in by their drivers when they go out on a delivery run, and they wanted to do an ad that represents that in an appropriate light.
And they apparently quickly realized that there was hardly anyone better for the role than Stallone, who became known for representing characters that go against the odds and push hard to complete their duty.
The ad is full of hilarious moments and quotes, many of them references to Stallone’s previous works – such as “When it comes to delivering fresh bread on time, the oven gloves are off” and “Time to earn my crust”. The delivery driver also has “Eye of the Tiger” as his alarm tone for waking up, and seems to have some trouble recognizing that the driver’s seat is on the right side of the vehicle.
According to some commenters on the situation, this was actually a pretty major risk for the company buying the production, as it could have flopped badly if it wasn’t designed and executed in a tasteful way – but thankfully, that didn’t happen, and this ad only serves to add to Stallone’s popularity, it doesn’t take away anything from his image. If anything, it seems to have made many of his fans adore him even more, judging by online discussions and the comments surrounding the video.