Will Ferrell Promotes Film, Other Products

Actor Will Ferrell has parodied NASCAR with Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, figure skating with Blades of Glory, and now he takes on basketball with Semi-Pro. According to The New York Times, Ferrell, as his character Jackie Moon, has been appearing in TV commercials for Bud Light and Old Spice to promote his film, which opens Feb. 29.

Semi-Pro tells the story of a fictional American Basketball Association team, the Flint Tropics, that is trying to become one of the four franchises to merge into the NBA in 1976. At that time, only the Nets, the Pacers, the Spurs and the Nuggets made it.

Moon is the playing owner and coach of the Flint Tropics. In the Bud Light ad, he goes off-script several times in describing the beer, finally saying it "refreshes the palate and the loins." In one of his ads promoting the new anti-perspirant Old Spice Pro Strength, Moon says he knows so much about sweat and sweating, he may as well be "a sweat scientist."

"Any time you have someone of [Ferrell's] popularity so closely tied to your brand, it helps both," Robert C. Lachky, executive vice president for global industry and creative development for Anheuser-Busch, Bud Light's brewer, said. "It gives us an association with him, and gives Will's camp great pre-publicity for the film. It's a match made in heaven for us."