The 'Prince of Darkness' Resurfaces to Sell

Ozzy Osbourne's Eccentricities Highlighted in Spots for Samsung, Blizzard

Posted by Mike Tunnicliffe in Ad Age Songs For Soap on 12.03.08 @ 11:17 AM

Ozzy Osbourne hits the screens in two separate endorsements this month.

The first one, for the Samsung Propel phone, has the mumbling rock star trying to order coffee, take a cab and visit his therapist. Unfortunately no one can understand poor Ozzy's mumblings, not even the barista at the coffee house, so he texts him his order for "black coffee" using the Propel. Later, a taxi driver can't understand Ozzy, so he texts the cabby his destination, and finally Ozzy performs the same routine with his therapist, who naturally finds this quite disturbing.

The campaign is taken online with a neat "Ozzy said what?" section of the Samsung site that invites customers to translate what Ozzy's saying and type it in on the new QWERTY keyboard.

Ozzy also appears as "The Original Prince of Darkness" to promote Blizzard Entertainment's "Warcraft" game, where the character Arthas is poised to steal his crown. In the nationally televised spot, Ozzy is seen mumbling that he has been "the prince of darkness since 1979" (though we can only digest this dialogue through the subtitles) and finally yells at the camera "What's your **@!! Game?"

These are two amusing pieces of communication that fit perfectly with the mumbling, shaking star, though as music/brand marketing agency Frukt points out, with Ozzy's shaky hands, the likelihood of any text message being clearer than his words is slim!



~ ~ ~
Mike Tunnicliffe is a partner in Los Angeles based Filament Entertainment Group