Chevy Corvette Ad Nabs Princely Awards

Dig if you will the picture of a global music icon continuing to generate prestigious awards months after his tragic passing. Earlier this week, beloved pop superstar Prince did just that. On Wednesday, General Motors‘ 2016 ads memorializing the great Purple One nabbed three awards from the prestigious Adcraft Club of Detroit.

Motor City-based ad agency Commonwealth/McCann, which counts GM among its big-name clients, picked up an award for “Best Ad of the Year” at the 2016 Adcraft Club of Detroit Awards on Nov. 30. The creative gesture also nabbed two additional trophies for its elegant Chevrolet ad paying respect to Prince’s passing last April. Prominently featured is a shiny, cherry-colored Corvette, which, of course, is the subject of Prince’s 1982 hit “Little Red Corvette.” Paraphrased lyrics from the song, “Baby, that was much too fast, 1958-2016,” accompany the image.

“It was a fitting way for a brand to pay tribute to a global icon like Prince,” Adcraft Club’s executive director Michelle Rossow told The Detroit News about the “perfect” and “beautiful” ad. Chevy’s advertisement appeared across GM’s social media channels and in a half-dozen U.S. publications earlier this year. The ad went on to beat out nearly 600 entrants at the 2016 Adcraft Club of Detroit Awards.

Commonwealth/McCann, which  counts the city of Detroit among its clients, also won an Adcraft award for its 2016 Chevy Malibu spot that appeared in cinemas earlier this year.

“Little Red Corvette” is a single from Prince’s iconic 1983 album 1999. It was his first U.S. Top 10 single, and no song has done more to promote a car since. However, the 2011 tome Prince: Inside the Music and the Masks reveals that the tune wasn’t inspired by a ‘Vette. Prince came up with the song while resting in Revolution keyboardist Lisa Coleman‘s hot-pink Mercury Montclair Marauder. But, a pop-funk jam about courting a fast lover in an Edsel just didn’t sound as sexy.