It's Lights, Camera, Action For Goodyear Tire Effort

With dramatic special effects and an action-movie director behind the camera, two spots that break today for Goodyear Tire & Rubber’s Assurance line aim to sell the technological benefits of the brand, the company’s first new tire line in 14 years.

Charged with Goodyear’s biggest tire launch since 1992’s Aquatred (on which the company spent an estimated $100 million in marketing), Hitchcock Fleming & Associates in Akron, Ohio, enlisted Jan de Bont to shoot a 30-second spot and a 90-second “mini-movie” for the line.

Shot on location in Iceland with digital effects added later, the ads, titled “Assurance World,” show a vehicle fitted with Assurance tires as it navigates treacherous terrain, including black-sand volcanic beaches and icy, snow-covered glaciers.