With Ontario’s businesses opening up following a shutdown due to COVID, Oakville Nissan/Infiniti Vice-President/General Manager Greg Carrasco is back filming commercials that will be featured in a variety of platforms, including movie theatres.
Carrasco is known for his brash marketing and his catchphrase “something’s happening here at Oakville Nissan.”
He writes, directs and produces his own commercials, and has ads for his dealerships in radio, TV, newspapers and social media; but the use of movie theatres has literally made him larger than life.
“I went to the movies with my kids once and they didn’t know I was in the commercials,” he said. “But then people started to tag me on social media. People are hilarious, man.”
The commercials are only allowed to be shown in Oakville theatres because of market area rules pertaining to dealerships. He estimates they’ve been running in theatres off and on for some 12 years. “Sometimes I go on a run, sometimes I don’t,” he said. “During COVID all the (movie theatres) were closed down. We just re-activated the contract.”
A previous owner of a Crossfit training centre, the 50-year-old Chile native is now partnering with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt Luiz Costa in a gym in Oakville, slated to open within a week. Carrasco practices that specific form of martial arts.
“I’ve always been very physically active and I found myself training 10-15 hours a week, so why wouldn’t I want to own something that I love doing so much,” he said. “I’ve been wanting to open a gym for some time, but I was looking for a suitable partner and Luiz is one of the most amazing humans I’ve met,” he said.
Carrasco also said he will be starting an online course in Political Science at York University in the fall with the intent of becoming a lawyer.
“The idea behind it is as I wind down my career in the car business, I want to keep busy,” he said. “I set myself a goal of having a law degree by the age of 60. Considering I’m an executive of a company and I run businesses, there’s a limited time I have. I can’t go to school full-time for obvious reasons. I figure I’m going to chip away at for the next few years.
“I think I’d do well in litigation. I can talk and I can argue for sure. I think I’m a good communicator for the most part. But that’s so far down the line I don’t want to live my life seven or eight years from now. I’m living it today.”
