Lewis Lazare: Last spring, Jerry Dow flew the coop at United Airlines, where he helped orchestrate the debut of the carrier’s glorious “It’s Time to Fly” campaign, to become chief marketing officer for the National and Alamo car rental companies.
It took only a few weeks for Dow to initiate an agency review for the two car rental brands that resulted in Fallon/Minneapolis becoming the new ad agency of record for both National and Alamo. The same Fallon, by the way, that handles United’s advertising.
After that turn of events, we were hopeful Fallon would muster the same brilliance it brought to United’s advertising for the National and Alamo brands. But our hopes were dashed in the worst way late last week when we got our first look at the new campaign Fallon has cooked up for National, which debuts this week. The campaign tagline is “green means go.” And it doesn’t work. At all.
