Unlike most American men, I really don’t give a toss about American football. It’s not really my thing. I didn’t have much of an interest as I am neither from Pittsburgh (despite having spent a few years there) or Wisconsin (is anyone from Wisconsin?), but as usual the advertising in the superbowl was superb. Being that this is a car site, I’ve collected the automotive-related ads from last night’s advertising bowl in one easy-to-reach post along with some commentary. I’m going to leave a poll at the end of the post so you can vote on your favorite Super Bowl advertiser from this year!
Audi’s whole “luxury prison” concept is a bit hard to wrap your head around. Still, the whole “It’s a trap!” bit as he gets into the S-class Benz is classic. “Nonsense, my father had one!” as he is driven back into the prison. Creative, but I’m still not sure it says much about Audi’s products, so much as it says that Mercedes owners are half senile.
BMW’s ad for the new X3 primarily focuses on the company’s economic strength as well as their domestic manufacturing plant in Spartanburg, SC. Another car ad that doesn’t say anything about the car.
Now that’s more like it! Basic fact: America is afraid of diesels (we’ve had some bad experiences.) BMW uses the best trick in the book to sling their diesel-burning 3-series sports sedan, showing all the examples of smoking piece of junk diesels in our past, and then shows a 335d powersliding around a Volvo wagon going up a hill, set to “Changes.” I can dig it.
“Well, it says about you Sheila… holy sh*t! A talking car!” Sigh. Cars.com, you can do better.
We’ve already had a look at Chevy’s “hot for the teacher” Camaro ad before the super bowl aired, but I have to admit it’s pretty cute. Suggested tagline: “The Camaro: so damn good looking it’ll make an elementary school teacher look hot!”
It sort of goes downhill from there for Chevy with a pair of exceedingly dumb ads for the Cruze subcompact, which is actually a pretty nice car. This one seems to focus on making fun of the fact that old people in a retirement home have hearing problems, which isn’t very nice.
Arrrrgh. This ad says “Cruze buyers are so hard-up for dates they’ll use OnStar to check their facebook news feed the second they get into the car. To see if their date happened to make a post about them. Because they’re dorks. Civic drivers don’t even bother, because they have smart phones that do the same thing.” Since when did we need OnStar to read our news feed to us? D for Dumb.
Chrysler is so angry about being 3rd in a 3-person race, they hired Eminem to drive a Sebring200 around Detroit, and then point at the camera and get all angry. Which would be seriously cool if he wasn’t driving a Chrysler 200. They could’ve put him behind the wheel of the gangsta-matic 300C, but the UAW would have $@# an entire brick over the fact that it’s built in, uhh, Canada. Imagine the tagline: “Motor city: this is what we make Canada do for us.”
As usual, Hyundai/Kia rolled in with a whole bevy of really seriously good ads. This one is probably the only weak spot. It’s their humorous way of saying “Sorry we got beaten to the hybrid midsize sedan market by, uhh, GM and Ford and Toyota, but ours is better.” Which it actually is, so at least that holds water.
“Compact cars don’t have to be boring. Snap out of it, man!” Except it’s a Hyundai Elantra, with a 1.8L! What’s more boring that best-in-class fuel economy?
Kia has been cranking out some of the most memorable advertising in the industry for a while now, and the ad for the new Optima is no exception. Message: “the Optima is so hot that Poseidon wants a piece of it.” Awesome!
And here’s Mini, telling us to “Cram it in the boot.” What’s more insulting: the Countryman itself, or Mini telling us to stuff it up our collective… never mind.
The Mercedes Super Bowl ad was pretty creepy. I don’t think I’d buy an E-class if I knew it was going to start itself up and drive away in the middle of the night, even if I was P.Diddy and had enough money in between the cushions of my couch to go and buy another one right now. Bonus points for using the Janis Joplin classic “Mercedes Benz” (which if I’m interpreting correctly isn’t exactly a song praising Mercedes-Benz, but it’s not the first time a song has been grossly misused in advertising.) Extra bonus points for the sneaky public debut of the SLS Roadster, which looks incredibly sexy.
The fact that Suzuki actually had the funding to air an advertisement during the Super Bowl is fairly surprising, so I’m not shocked it’s an old ad. At least it’s a funny one, showing off the all-weather capability of the Kizashi AWD. By the way, did you know the AWD Kizashi has button-actived 4WD? It’s 2WD until you hit a button! Now if only it was RWD and hitting a button made it AWD. Still, hopefully this ad will help people realize that Suzuki is still selling cars here in the US.
Getting down to the end of the list here with VW’s two Super Bowl ads, both of which I really liked. This one’s for the upcoming new-new Beetle which should be debuting in the fall. Seeing a Beetle (the insect) powersliding around a centipede is pretty cool, but this one would’ve been cooler if they’d… ya know, shown us the new Beetle already.
And finally, what seemed to be everyone’s favorite car ad of the superbowl: VW’s “The Force.” Sure, remote start isn’t new technology, and sure the new Passat will likely be a boring mainstream name misappropriation, but this ad is seriously cute.
So, drop your vote in the poll below: which brand do you think had the best advertisement in the Super Bowl this year? Leave a comment in the box if you want to voice your opinion further!
