Art director Matt Moore recently left Wieden + Kennedy Tokyo to take a creative director job at Barton F. Graf 9000 in New York—and he needed to sell his 1968 Ford Ranchero GT 390, which he'd been restoring for several years.
But he didn't want to post the usual lame Craigslist ad. So, he decided to take a journey through the past and dig up the original print ads for the vehicle, from the 1960s—and then, shall we say, kick the tires a bit and improve the ads for the modern age.
The old ads were beautiful, Moore decided, but the copy was outdated garbage. So, he focused on rewriting the headlines and the body copy—with pretty hilarious results. (For an art director, Moore has pretty good writing chops.)
Check out one of his creations here (click to enlarge):
AdFreak caught up with Moore, who told us the story behind the project:
Originally I wanted to sell my car but I looked on Craigslist and saw so many boring ads for really unique cars. Then I thought, maybe it would be funny if I could find the original ads for my 1968 Ford to help sell my car.
When I found them, the style was beautiful. Elegant type, detailed illustration and really nice layouts. But the copy was so boring and sell-y that it kind of ruined the ads for me. So I just began re-writing the ads in the style that I would like to be sold to, while maintaining the structure and linguistic style of the old ads.
It was pretty fun and easy after that. My hope was that people would see these on Craigslist and think "Hey, these are strange, did they really run print ads like that back in the '60s?"
One guy emailed me and told me about how his father-in-law used to call him a "sissy" until he purchased and restored his own muscle car. He wasn't interested in buying my car but he told me that he now has earned the respect of his wife's father, and he identified with the sentiment in one of my ads.
Others have messaged me—in all seriousness—about how those were the good old days, and they don't make cars or print ads like they used to.
Check out two more of Moore's ads below. Your move, Nate Walsh.
