The picture was taken before Felt's copy was written and was part of what we called an experimental shoot. We took two truckloads of Chevy prototype cars to the GM Proving Ground in Mesa, Arizona, to take pictures that could later be turned into ads. Most of the effort was made on the proving grounds, but we also found a secure location just east of Apache Junction.
It was a Western town constructed by one of the movie studios way out in the desert. Perfect for the kind of security Chevrolet demanded, so we rented it for a day. I spotted an old barn, and we put two cars in it for the picture you see. Warren Winstanley was the photographer and the young lady, as I recall, was later to become famous as the Perfect 10... Bo Derek. I think she was only in her teens at the time. My only regret is that we didn't do a bit of retouching on the cars.
Chevy's ad department approved the ad, and it moved on to the general sales manager. He thought the rope interfered with the cars and should be removed. While that was being done, Chevy general manager "Pete" Estes reviewed the ad. He thought, as we did, that the rope added considerably to the ad, so it was put back in. When the general sales manager made his final approval, he asked for the rope's removal. He would handle the problem with 1 Mr. Estes. Out came the rope again. In a final review, with Mr. Estes and the corporation, Mr. Estes ordered the rope back in. Win some, lose some. This time a win.
Camaro and Corvette had also shared ad space in 1968. "HUGGING COUSINS" ran in the buff books and Sports I Illustrated as a single page. This j fine ad was produced by the creative team of Jim Hartzell and Tony Longo. Hartzell was the copywriter who would later make us all memorable with his Baseball, Hotdogs, Apple Pie, and Chevrolet television and radio commercials. (Probably the most famous ever written for Chevrolet, or any other automaker.) One of our finest art directors, Tony was a great proponent of using large type as a design element. It would be difficult to imagine this ad with the tiny type used in most ad headlines today. Design styles come and go, and I bet it won't be much longer before art directors again discover the value of large-type headlines as a design element. Copywriters will be happy when they do.
If you can find a copy of the November 11, 1967 issue of Newsweek or the December 6, 1967 issue of Life magazine, you'll have a copy of the spread version of this ad. Single pages ran in other national magazines.
The idea of "HUGGING COUSINS" was more than just a nifty turn on an old saying. It played beautifully to a theme we had been using for Camaro since 1967: "The Hugger - The road-hugging fun car from Chevrolet." Actually, Corvette and Camaro had very little in common. Corvette was a real sports car, and Camaro was a fun sporty car. They both had bucket seats, and they both handled well in turns. The Camaro's handling capability was the reason for the "Hugger" designation. The most important thing the two vehicles had in common was your local Chevrolet dealer. When you inspect the way the sheet metal looks on both cars, you can see why I wish we had done some retouching on the other ad.
While quite different in their presentation, both ads did a memorable job for Chevrolet.
Camaro's "Hugger" handle came about in a meeting with Chevrolet ad executives, and the ad here is the first in which we made that claim. We had presented a round of new advertising that was fairly well accepted but had generated considerable conversation about the Camaro's handling capability. Tom Staudt had recently joined Chevrolet as its first real director of marketing, and he liked to discuss at length various aspects of the communications.
I liked and respected him very much, but I think it is fair to say he could be a little long-winded at times. Still, he was one of the few ad executives with whom you could win an argument if you presented him with a convincing point of view. After a long speech about the Camaro's road-hugging capabilities, Tom kind of stumbled on the idea of Camaro as "The Hugger."
The ad was pretty much put together and approved in the meeting. The creative people are most often the ones who come up with ad ideas, but there are plenty of times when good thoughts come from other places. The trick for the creative people is to grab the thought no matter where it comes from and run with it. In this case, it made all future Camaro ads a lot easier to get approved if there was a mention of "The Hugger." This ad could have been better if the car had been shown performing at high speed in a tight turn, but the water on the road does help some. In retrospect, I don't remember why we didn't use a better picture. Sometimes it just works out that way.
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