We know what you’re craving: more Mitsubishi ad campaigns from 1984! Stunned by our mind-reading abilities, aren’t you? Far from an Orwellian nightmare world, that year turned out to be a resounding success for the triple diamond mafia’s marketing department.

You might think that getting album cover artist Shusei Nagaoka to draw mind-blowing posters for the Starion and Cordia would be an epic publicity coup good enough for a single model year. But one ad agency had the genius to double down and compare the 1984 Mitsubishi Mirage with a frill-necked lizard.

Japanese cars often have nicknames bestowed on them from particularly memorable commercials. Perhaps the most notable example being the kenmeri Skyline. So when Mirage ads began featuring the frill-necked lizard’s outlandish bipedal sprint, they inadvertently created a frill-necked lizard boom.

What the two have to do with each other is not entirely clear, but goods based to the running reptile began to take off, including a picture book called Run, Frill-Necked Lizard-kun! Take the Japanese word for frill-necked lizard, erimaki tokage, and you have the Erimaki Mirage, shorthand for the 1983-87 generation.

Okay, I think we’ve got it all out of our system. We promise not to post about 1984 Mitsubishi ad campaigns for at least several months.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 16th, 2009 at 1:11 am
by Ben and is filed under mitsubishi.
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