OK, there's no secret to the fact that I'm a car nut; willing to spend all my disposable income on the latest and greatest with four wheels, preferably from the Fatherland. Needless to say, I was thrilled that some of the best ads during last night's Super Bowl were the ads from BMW, Mercedes and Volkswagen.
Chrysler, which is now controlled by the Italian automaker Fiat, had an ad showcasing the Detroit heritage of their revamped Sebring, the Chrysler 200, which I thought was less than convincing. Let's not forget Chevrolet. They had several ads and even sponsored the FOX show Glee after the game, turning it into a giant non-stop commercial. My favorite was the transformer ad shown during the game.
One of the two BMW ads really struck a cord with me, since it made good fun of Americans' perceptions of diesel engines (I bought a VW TDI last summer), showing a diesel truck driver and an ancient Volvo station wagon spewing acrid black smoke and then showing a sparkling clean 3 Series motor away with its Advanced Diesel engine.
I loved the Mercedes ad that showed the wonderful heritage of the brand, with famous models coming 'alive' and meeting up with the new models. Of course, everyone's favorite is the VW ad for the 2012 Passat (See Steve's blog from last week) that features a little boy as Darth Vader...shouldn't it have been Luke Skywalker?? Oh, well, it was cute and simple, which is all you can hope for during the Super Bowl, when we're saturated with multiple images and messages. The teaser ad for the upcoming Beetle was awesome as well.
As Steve mentioned, what's most interesting is that VW previewed their ad in full on YouTube before the game, and garnered plenty of interest before the ad even aired. It shows the power of online marketing and the fact that smart manufacturers make these ads into complete campaigns that stretch over several weeks or months. Whether or not anyone ever puts VW into their consideration set when purchasing a new car remains to be seen. And of course the Today Show had the mini Darth Vader on this morning. George Lucas must be very happy, not to mention VW.
May the Force be with you! (I had to say it).
