Just like you know peanut butter and jelly will always go together, you know that certain things never will. Driving, for instance, should never go with any type of visual impairment or disability, for safety reasons. But this ad does just that.
In marketing, memorable associations are created to sell products. Since October is Commercials Month on autoevolution, we’re looking at some of the most memorable, for whatever reasons, car commercials or marketing campaigns, and this one stands out for creating perhaps the one association no one would have thought of before.
We’ll explain. Many ads will use the sexy angle to present a new vehicle. This is perhaps less common today because societal rules and behaviors have changed, but it was the norm some decades ago. The moment you turned on the TV or opened a magazine, you’d see dozens of gorgeous, leggy, sometimes scantily clad ladies shilling for a new automobile. And that was just the most common way in which the association was made.
Cars were (and still are, but in a less obvious way) sexy. They are desirable and, once bought, enjoyed with all senses, including touch, so the association came naturally. That said, imagine an ad that tricked you into thinking it was about to show you that, only to deliver a twist in the form of a blind man at the wheel, actually driving.
Photo: Facebook / Ray Charles
This was the ad for the Peugeot 306 Cabriolet, released in France in 1994. The visually impaired driver was none other than legendary soul and blues singer Ray Charles, a man who had lost his sight completely aged 7 and then went on to become a music icon despite of it.
You can see the ad in full (but in low quality) in the video at the bottom of the page. To this day, it is considered one of the most iconic, surprising and absolutely awesome commercials of all times, as well as the strangest and most unexpected celebrity endorsement. Many celebrities choose to endorse various products for whatever reason (*money, they almost always do it for money), but A-listers are very careful to pick products that somehow suit their image and their brand.
This was the opposite of that.
The ad opens with images of a man’s hand caressing the body of a new red car, so the viewer is tricked into thinking this is another one of “those” ads. The sucker punch comes almost right away, with a shot of Ray Charles inside the Cabriolet, in the driver’s seat, and is followed by another one: footage of Brother Ray actually driving.
Photo: Facebook / Ray Charles
It’s true, the scene has Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats as the background, so it’s not like he’s posing any danger to himself or others, but it’s still a shock. The camera lingers on Ray’s face, which shows the same feeling of rapture he got when he’s singing – and, of course, the whole thing is set to his classic “Georgia on My Mind.”
It isn’t just the shocking association of a blind man driving a car that makes this ad iconic: it’s also Ray’s expression. It epitomizes the experience of driving so perfectly that no voiceover is even necessary, which makes this one of the most efficient commercials ever made: driving should be a feeling comparable to whatever Ray Charles was feeling at the moment.
The artist would say in a later interview that he had a blast shooting and that he was allowed to drive for as long as he wanted. Urban legend has it that this was the first time Ray ever drove a car, but that’s not true: Ray Charles Jr. would recall in a 1992 interview that his father used to own a gorgeous ‘63 Corvette he was being driven in daily, and which he totaled by trying to drive it out of an intersection himself.
Another reason for which the ad is iconic is that, despite appearances, it was very on-brand for Ray Charles, a man who refused to let his blindness define or hinder him in any way. He would always say that he never regarded his condition as a disability because he would have still done his thing even if it hadn’t happened to him: being blind never impacted on his music.
Photo: Facebook / Ray Charles
Perhaps few people know it, but Ray Charles was the kind of man for whom the impossible was nothing but a new challenge. Besides demanding that he be allowed to drive his own car, he could also ride motorcycles (he once said he’d probably be a Harley-Davidson collector if he weren’t visually impaired), and fly an airplane. He would occasionally fly his own plane in the ‘60s, a five-passenger Cessna 310, with assistance from main pilot Tom McGarrity and the beam tones of the radar.
So, if you ever allowed yourself to be talked into anything by a commercial, allow Ray Charles to tell you a thing or two about the joys of driving with just a smile.
Elena has been writing for a living since 2006 and, as a journalist, she has put her double major in English and Spanish to good use. She covers automotive and mobility topics like cars and bicycles, and she always knows the shows worth watching on Netflix and friends. Full profile
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