It's flashback week for fans of 1990s hip-hop, with Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs and Snoop Dogg making advertising cameos that would have seemed inconceivable 15 years ago.
Combs, known these days as Diddy, headlines a new 60-second spot from Fiat and ad agency Doner. In the ad, we see two men wandering the desert in a delirious haze, unsure if they're really being saved by a celebrity or just imagining a mirage.
Meanwhile, Snoop, who has gone by Snoop Lion lately, has popped up in, of all places, a British auto insurance ad from agency Mother. He narrates the story of a dorky white guy named Phil who saved money by getting insurance from MoneySuperMarket and now feels "epic." Feeling epic, in this case, means driving an invisible car and hanging out at inner-city street parties.
It's not exactly jarring to see these two iconic rappers in ads, since both have been frequent marketing mouthpieces in recent years. But it's still entertaining to imagine how they would have reacted to the words "Fiat" and "MoneySuperMarket" in 1997.