Blake Griffin Travels Back In Time To Promote New Kia Optima

 

What advice would you give yourself if you could go back in time to your childhood? What would you tell the six-year-old kid you once were? Well, Blake Griffin has done just that in a new ad for the 2013 Kia Optima sedan.

Looks like Kia has ditched the hamsters, for the time being anyway. The automobile brand has rekindled its ties with NBA star Blake Griffin to coincide with the beginning of the 2012-13 basketball season. The ad is one of a series that Griffin is doing with the brand, with Kia Motors being the official vehicle of the NBA.

In the series, the car has an in-built time machine (naturally) and Griffin visits various versions of himself throughout his life. In this first spot, with a smouldering smile at the camera, Blake commands the Kia Optima to go back to 1995 to meet the six-year-old him.

He finds himself, curly-haired and cute, hanging from a basketball hoop in front of his garage. Taking the mickey out of himself, and his slight trouble with free throws, the basketball star advises mini-Blake to "practise your free throws". He then proceeds to take a shot at the hoop, and misses. "Alot", he adds.

The actual key feature of this ad is Uvo, a voice-activated entertainment and information system, with a soundsystem called Jukebox. Blake shows off the voice-activation feature, and we get a pleasant flash of nostalgia with classic This Is How We Do It by Montell Jordan, from that year.

Another ad in the series features a slightly older Blake being reprimanded for playing American Football and told not to wear 'jean shorts', while 1997 hit "How Bizarre" plays in the background. 

Judging by their history, singing hamsters and all, the motors brand knows how to make videos storm up the charts. It looks like this series of ads is going to be another slamdunk for Kia.