I’ve watched this advert twice and frankly didn’t get it until it dawned on me: VW is so scared that people are going to think that the new VW Golf 6 is actually just the Golf 5 in a slightly different frock that they decided to barely put the actual car in this advert and distract you by showing a poor three legged Cheetah.
Think about it; instead of saying: “Wow, I’m not paying over 200K for a car I could have bought four years ago and is more expensive to buy yet cheaper to build”, people will say: “Awww, look at the Cheetah”. It’s a simple marketing trick known as “positive association” whereby the viewer associates a totally unrelated topic to the product advertised and then has warm cuddly feelings to the cute Cheetah… I mean Golf 6.
Seriously though, an advert about a woman that rehabilitates Cheetah’s for a living would be able to afford a Golf 6? I mean have you seen the price of those cars?
The advert revolves around a woman narrating how she found this Cheetah that had to have its leg amputated but it can amazingly still walk and blah blah until the very end of the advert when she puts the Cheetah in the back of the car and rolls down the window so it can feel the sensation of speed despite not being able to run. The tag line is “Just because she can’t run, doesn’t mean she’s not a Cheetah”. Do you see what they did there and how clever it is?
Maybe it’s just me but the message I’m getting is that if you’ve had the misfortune of an amputation then don’t worry because all you need to do is buy a Golf 6 and you’ll be able to “run” again. I’m surprised the insensitive people that put this advert together didn’t cast Oscar Pistorious in the advert.
The reality is they didn’t get particularly innovative in the creation of the car so why try stick your neck out with the advertising of the vehicle? I mean what’s wrong with the old car advert staple of hot girls, flashing lights and the aforementioned hot girls acting very naughty?
I think I’m just a cold hearted bastard for feeling nothing when this ad comes on besides disdain. It has nothing to do with the car and doesn’t even aim to promote brand loyalty or some other fancy marketing buzzword. The irony about the Golf 6 is that despite bad advertising, despite the insanely high pricing and despite the (cosmetically) four parts of the car they changed from the last model it’s still going to sell in the bucketloads. Ho hum
Enjoy this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed.
like the cheetah story – would not have remembered the product in a million years
nooo, no burst my bubble. cheetah out window of G**f™ is perfectly innocent and cute.
Love that add but had no idea it was even advertising a car.