• by Aaron Baar , January 14, 2014

Fred Couples and Corey Pavin step outside their comfort zones (but remain cool) in a new Mitsubishi Electric effort.

Mitsubishi Electric equates the discomfort one feels at the hand of a shaky barber or encountering new technology with being too hot or too cold in one’s home in a new television campaign. 

In the new effort, from longtime agency Ames Scullin O’Haire in Atlanta, Mitsubishi Electric leverages its sponsorship of the Professional Golf Association by casting Couples and Pavin as the men who find themselves in uncomfortable situations. In one commercial, Couples encounters a barber known as “Shaky” to shave his face after his regular man runs off for the birth of his child. In a second spot, Pavin has trouble with the self-checkout lane at a grocery store, much to the ire of the people in line behind him. 

“It’s all about taking these golfers who are known to be cool under pressure and taking them out of their comfort zone,” Patrick Scullin, managing partner of creative at Ames Scullin O’Haire, tells Marketing Daily. 

Both commercials are being run as part of the Golf Channel’s coverage of the Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai, Hawaii, which begins this week, and will later appear on other golf programming throughout the season. Mitsubishi Electric has been a corporate sponsor of the PGA Champions Tour for several years, owing to the tour’s high-income demographic attraction, and the feature that the Mitsubishi Elecric systems don’t require installed duct work, Scullin says.  

“It’s a perfect consumer base because it’s a higher-end product, and it’s a higher-income demographic,” he says. 

The agency is at work on further spots in the campaign featuring other professional golfers out of their comfort zone, and will likely have a brand campaign running as the golf season gets into high gear this spring, Scullin says.