For three seasons, the actor Jon Hamm has played the 1960s adman Don Draper on the hit AMC TV series “Mad Men.” Beginning on Sunday, he gets to do some advertising work in the real world as the new commercial voice of Mercedes-Benz USA. Mr. Hamm’s voice will be heard in a commercial that Mercedes-Benz USA will run on local ABC stations in the carmaker’s 16 largest markets during the ABC network’s broadcast of the Academy Awards.
The spot will make a sustainability pitch for Mercedes-Benz, promoting the marque’s environmentally focused products like the new S400 Hybrid. In becoming the voice of Mercedes-Benz USA, Mr. Hamm will replace the actor Richard Thomas, best known as John-Boy on the former CBS series, “The Waltons.”
Mr. Thomas has served as the voice-over talent for Mercedes-Benz for the last four years. “It’s a nice re-fresh of our voice,” Stephen Cannon, vice president for marketing at Mercedes-Benz USA in Montvale, N.J., said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. Not only does Mr. Hamm have “a terrific, very resonant voice with a lot of gravitas to it,” Mr. Cannon said, he will also help Mercedes-Benz “reach out to a younger, more vibrant audience.”
That is because Mr. Hamm is “ascendant, a hot actor,” Mr. Cannon said, as well as a “current part of pop culture.” Mr. Hamm’s contract is for three years. Serving as the voice-over announcer for car commercials — almost always uncredited in the ads — has become something of a plum role for actors. Toyota has used Martin Sheen, while Honda has used the likes of Daniel J. Travanti and Richard Dreyfuss.
And a couple of years before hiring Mr. Thomas, Mercedes-Benz used the actor Joe Mantegna for eight years. Currently, Hyundai is using Jeff Bridges, nominated for an Oscar for an Academy Award as best actor. (Interestingly, Mr. Bridges’s voice will not be heard during the Hyundai commercials broadcast nationally during the show because of rules by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that prohibit certain types of participation by nominees in commercials during the program. In his stead, Hyundai will use actors like Mr. Dreyfuss, Mandy Patinkin and Mr. Sheen to fill in.)
After the new Mercedes-Benz commercial appears on Sunday, it will be seen during network shows like “American Idol,” “C.S.I.: Miami,” and “24” and on cable channels like Bravo, CNN, Discovery and HGTV. The commercial presents a new S400 Hybrid parked under a tree.
Mr. Hamm describes how it is “powered by a compact lithium ion battery,” then goes on to talk about other eco-friendly Mercedes-Benzes like the BlueTEC clean diesels and “a hydrogen electric car that emits only water.”
“What drives us is the desire to create not only the best cars in the world but for it,” Mr. Hamm intones, adding, “A cleaner, safer future is what drives us.” In addition to the commercial, there will also be print and online advertising. Plus on Sunday, as the Academy Awards ceremony takes place, digital ads for the S400 will appear on the Thomson Reuters Building in Times Square.
The campaign is being created by the longtime Mercedes-Benz USA agency, Merkley & Partners in New York, part of the Omnicom Group, and Razorfish in Seattle, a unit of the Publicis Groupe. Merkley handles the traditional ads and Razorfish handles the digital ads. On “Mad Men,” Mr. Hamm’s character, Don Draper, has worked on campaigns for actual and make-believe products like Lucky Strike cigarettes, Belle Jolie cosmetics, the Kodak Carousel slide projector, Right Guard deodorant and Utz potato chips.
Mr. Hamm performed some real-world ad work in 2008, when he spoke at a presentation during Advertising Week in New York to promote the introduction by Yahoo of a system to buy and sell display advertising online. “Mad Men,” to begin its fourth season on AMC in the summer, has had special ad deals with a rival of Mercedes-Benz, BMW, that included BMW’s sponsorships of the second and third season premieres. Mr. Hamm did not perform in those ads.
A second Mercedes-Benz commercial featuring Mr. Hamm’s voice-over is expected to begin running in about a month, Mr. Cannon said. He described it as “a big brand spot” for the 2011 SLS, which revives the gull-wing Mercedes-Benz of the 1950s. The 16 markets in which Mr. Hamm’s first commercial is expected to run include Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Diego, San Francisco and Washington.