The phrase "reunion tour" typically conjures images of aging rock bands, but in advertising, it more often means a pair of comedians from a beloved television era climbing into a sport utility vehicle and pretending to be surprised by the legroom.
Tina Fey and Rachel Dratch, who first performed together at Chicago's ImprovOlympic in the early 1990s before becoming cast members on "Saturday Night Live," are now appearing in a campaign for the Volkswagen Atlas. The spot, created by NBCUniversal's in-house Rock Studios unit, finds the two trading observations about their respective passengers — Ms. Fey discovers that the actor playing her son is 38 years old, while Ms. Dratch reveals that her companion is, in fact, her Italian fiancé.
(The jokes land gently, which is perhaps the point.)
The campaign is part of NBCUniversal's NBC100 celebration, marking the entertainment company's centennial, and represents what executives on both sides describe as a convergence of brand values. Rachael Zaluzec, the chief marketing officer of Volkswagen of America, said the Atlas "was designed to fit all of them," referring to families of various configurations. "Wanting to highlight that everyday chaos," she added, "an unexpected cast of family characters felt like a funny, honest way to tell that story."
Mike Marshall, NBCUniversal's chairman of global advertising and partnerships, called the effort "a great example of how we continue to put our legacy into action with our partners" — a sentence that means, roughly, that the company is pleased to have found a use for its intellectual property that also generates revenue.
For Volkswagen, the play is familiar: attach the brand to cultural moments when families might still be watching television together, a demographic behavior that grows rarer by the quarter. Whether the Atlas can carry that weight remains, as always, a matter for the sales reports.
Ms. Fey's expressions, at least, remain reliable.