ohmidog!

As Matthew McConaughey’s Lincoln ads go, this new one, thankfully, doesn’t strive as hard to be sublime as the others, but it’s almost as ridiculous.

Generally, the series of luxury car ads has seemed more intent on celebrating the actor’s looks and accessories than the motor vehicle’s, and more concerned with his lofty personal observations than the vehicle’s performance.

This time, at least, he’s not talking to himself as he pulls out the driveway of a ritzy neighborhood. This time, he’s not checking his cuff links, or contemplatively rolling an invisible something between his thumb and forefinger.

This time, it’s a little more down to earth — he’s talking to two dogs in the back seat, about where to go eat.

“Alright what do you think boys?” McConaughey asks the German shorthaired pointer and Weimaraner in back of the Lincoln Navigator. “We could do tacos, we could do some Thai. Oh what do you think about sushi?”

(I wouldn’t recommend feeding any of those to a dog.)

The dogs somehow convey to McConaughey that they want barbecue (again). But McConaughey, deeming himself the far superior creature, nixes their idea

“No, we’re not having barbecue again. Why? Because you’re on four legs and I’m on two.

“And I’m driving.”

He punctuates that last sentence with a clicking mouth noise and a wink. Maybe it’s supposed to come across as sexy and self-assured, or it could just be to distract us from the obvious question: “If you didn’t care what they wanted to eat, why did you bother asking them in the first place?”

McConaughey has three dogs of his own, but none of them was used for the ad.

“Lincoln and I wanted the new ad to be more lighthearted and fun, so when they pitched the ‘driving with dogs’ idea I was in,” McConaughey said. In a news release for the ad, he added, “People love their dogs, I’ve got three myself, and yes, I, like most of you, even talk to them.”

The commercial spot, called “Time to Eat,” got its first TV air time during the Grammy awards. It was directed by filmmaker Gus Van Sant.

“Gus really understood how to bring the story of the Lincoln Navigator to life,” Jon Pearce, executive vice president and global chief creative officer for the ad agency Hudson Rouge, said in the release. “The setting, our canine passengers and some pithy dialogue all work together to tell the story of the type of person who likes to drive a Navigator.”

And what kind of person is that? We can only guess a pithy one.

(Woof in Advertising is a recurring ohmidog! feature that looks at how dogs are used in marketing. You can find earlier posts in this archived collection.)