Q. and A. With Stuart Elliott

Stuart Elliott, the advertising columnist, answers questions from readers each week. Questions can be sent to stuarte@nytimes.com.

Q. Who is the actress who plays the clerk behind the counter in the current series of Toyota commercials? I think she is very good - and pretty, too.

A. Thanks, dear reader, for your question about the spots for Toyota Motor Sales USA, which promote what the carmaker calls sales events like annual clearances. In the commercials, the character, named Jan, deals with offbeat customers who come into a Toyota dealership as they shop for a new car.

“Actress Laurel Coppock plays Jan, the knowledgeable, helpful and quick-witted receptionist,” says Angela Seits, a spokeswoman at the agency that creates the commercials, which is the Los Angeles office of Saatchi & Saatchi, part of the Publicis Groupe.

Ms. Coppock has also appeared in episodes of popular sitcoms like “Arrested Development,” “Modern Family” and “The Office,” according to Ms. Seits.

The Toyota character is somewhat reminiscent of Flo, the character played by Stephanie Courtney in a long-running series of commercials for Progressive insurance. Flo is a sales clerk in a Progressive superstore.

There seems to be a boom, or boomlet, in characters being introduced in campaigns for major marketers; I recently wrote about new characters in ads for Campbell’s condensed soups and Meineke car care centers. Other examples include a campaign for Volkswagen with a new character named Johnny Conquest, and a campaign for Zantac antacid with a new character named Captain Zantac.

Q. Who is the man doing the voice-overs in the TriHonda Dealers commercials? It’s a very “New York” kind of voice.

A. The voice in the spots that are part of the TriHonda Dealers campaign, which carries the theme “Not just smart. Street smart,” is provided by Edward Burns, says Tricia Kenney, a spokeswoman at the agency that creates the campaign, which is Publicis Kaplan Thaler in New York.

Mr. Burns is the actor (“Saving Private Ryan”) and director (“The Brothers McMullen”) who may probably be better known now as the husband of the supermodel Christy Turlington. The TriHonda Dealers - formally the TriHonda Dealer Advertising Association - is composed of dealers in metropolitan New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Publicis Kaplan Thaler is part of the Publicis in the USA division of Publicis Worldwide, which is a division of the Publicis Groupe.