The World Cup of Car Commercials
In case you hadn’t noticed, the FIFA World Cup has just taken place and that means the commercial breaks have been overflowing with car ads. John Lowery rates their performances.
Audi
The one obvious winner.
So wondrous is ‘Send in the Clowns’ that I call the family to silence for every OTS.
Not only is it a perfectly rendered demonstration of clever technology but it taps into the deeply held belief that “I’m the only driver on the road who’s not a clown.”
The perfect marriage of product, strategy and execution.
Verdict: Les Bleus, évidemment.
Sadly, after that, an entire circus-load of clowns was sent in; to take charge of the rest of the car advertising that’s been competing over the course of the World Cup.
Hyundai
Ironically, Hyundai is trying to make the exact same point as Audi; that their technology will save your life/car but it does it the wrong way around.
One gormless git has failed to apply the child locks and so relies on the ‘Safe Exit Assist’ to prevent his daughter from leaping before a bus.
Another gormless git only avoids crashing into the bus because of ‘Collision-avoidance Assist’.
What does that say about the people buying these cars? Hyundais might as well come with pre-applied bumper stickers announcing, ‘Clown on Board’.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing the car’s technology could do about the gormless gits who chose Maroon 5, whom you may remember being famous-ish about 10yrs ago, to murder Bob Marley’s ‘Three Little Birds’. Quite how that supports the endline – ‘Innovation in Every Moment’ – I’m at a loss to know.
Verdict: Panama, crashing out of the tournament with zero points and a goal difference of minus nine.
P.S. One thing distinguishes this commercial from the Panama team… there’s not one black face in it. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised given that they’ve paid a white band to sing a song written by a black man. And perhaps that explains why, at the time of writing 1.5k people had liked this ad on YouTube and more than a million had disliked it.
Kia
On the subject of surprises, Kia claims to have, ‘The Power to Surprise’.
Not if the cavalcade of clichés in this commercial is anything to go by.
Verdict: Australia, departing with a predictable single point.
Ford Ecosport (pronounced, inexplicably, Echo Sport)
The soundtrack is Elvis Costello’s ‘Pump it Up’.
Is the song out of copyright? Does Elvis need the money? Or is he just laughing his head off?
Remember when David Cameron chose ‘Eton Rifles’ on Desert Island Discs? Paul Weller subsequently asked of him, “Which bit didn’t you get?”
Which part of ‘Pump it Up’ did the clowns who chose the soundtrack for the Echo Sport ad not get?
There’s a clue when he sings, “Pump it up, when you don’t really need it. Pump it up, until you can feel it.”
But for the hard of listening, Costello expounded upon the meaning of the lyrics some years back: “I was compelled to write ‘Pump It Up’ as, you know, well just how much can you fuck, how many drugs can you do before you get so numb you can’t really feel anything?”
Ford’s line is, ‘Together We Go Further’. Well yes. But did you mean it quite that way?
Verdict: Germany. (Not going further.)
Mercedes
I actually fell asleep whilst watching it.
Verdict: Denmark 0 – France 0.
Vauxhall Corsa
There’s 0% finance on this vehicle which would be fine and dandy if there was a convincing reason to buy one.
Vauxhall attempted to entice us with the promise of heated seats and steering wheel and, and this is the clincher for the four women sitting in the car in the showroom, it has a music system.
Of course, women wouldn’t be interested in anything more substantial than warming their bums and manicured fingers whilst listening to music. (Incidentally, the track is called ‘Rinse & Repeat’. Are we to read anything into that?)
Verdict: Saudi Arabia, only less progressive.
Nissan Qashqai
It’s being chased by a mysterious motorcyclist. Who might this be and why are they pursuing a car with such an absurd name? Are they trying to replace the missing Us?
The tension builds. Mightily.
The car comes to a halt. An impossibly gorgeous man steps out to confront the impossibly gorgeous woman who has been riding the bike. He pouts. She shakes down her hair. Hanky-panky is surely in the offing. But no. In a plot twist with the subtlety of a jackhammer, it transpires that the motorcyclist was actually after the car not its driver.
What happened? Was it her car? Did he nick it? If so, what does that say about the security systems? We’re left to fill in the dots.
Verdict: The VAR could not be less bothered.
VW
Probably the finest car advertiser of all time. We desperately want VW to win. They’re the England of the tournament but, as with England, our dreams were dashed.
VW’s effort featured a small ram born with enormous adult horns. (The sheep that gave birth to him shows a remarkable degree of equanimity, given how excruciating the process must have been.)
After busting out of a shed and facing off both a bull and a sheepdog, the ram finally meets its nemesis – the new VW T-Roc. The tiny beast wisely steps out of the way rather than get run over by a 1.5 tonne vehicle.
I’m betting that the creative team involved wished they’d stepped out of the way of the beast of a brief: “It’s strong, it’s small, it’s an SUV, it’s new, no dialogue allowed and you can’t use the ‘If only everything was…’ endline, because some clown has decided that’s sooo old-fashioned.”
With England, it was a case of ‘if onlys’. If only Pickford had been a foot taller. If only Maguire had properly got his slab on it. If only Sterling’s goals weren’t as rare as unicorns.
And with VW it was the same. VW could have done something great if only they’d taken the c.£1m they wasted on their sponsorship idents and deployed the undoubted wit of the folk who wrote them in the form of commercials that, and I know this is a radical suggestion, said something meaningful about the cars.
Verdict: Tears of a clown (that wrote this).
John Lowery is a marketing consultant who has worked both agency and client side