We kicked off the week by taking a look at the lesser lights of car advertising. Our wholly subjective survey revealed that what annoys us probably annoys you. But there is some damn fine work to admire in advertising. With only 30 (or 60) seconds to sell a consumer purchase costing many thousands of dollars, admen are careful to unleash their best talent on the ads of an important client. And mindful that bad advertising can render a billion dollar investment worthless, car companies are picky about who they will allow to shill for their machinery. Today, we’re going to hand out kudos to the ones that did it best.
To a large degree, the best single commercials are part of a larger ad campaign. When a car makers ad agency finds a theme that works, they’ll ride that horse until it dies. Sometimes the theme is built around a simple message that lends itself to repetition (VW Beetle ads of the 60’s are the best example of this) while some campaigns come and go in a season. The only hard and fast rule is that if it moves the metal, you’ll see it again and again.
Flickering Kinescope images of the earliest days of TV advertising teach us that production quality has taken quantum leaps since the medium reached critical mass in the early 1950’s. To look at the crude camera, lighting and editing techniques in use in that era gives us an appreciation of just how far we’ve come since TV itself was a cultural novelty. Computer enhancement and electronic editing now make a thirty second spot a flawless production that even the best admen of the fifties and sixties couldn’t dream about.
Please note that there is a lot of “survivors bias” in the following list. The good ads stand tall in people’s memories while the awful spots are quickly forgotten. (Except here at CC). And while the worst ads were mostly American affairs, some of the best spots going will never air in the states. I hope that the ones sprinkled in here give you an entertaining look at some great talent in what to us is “foreign” television.
VW “Snowplow Driver” -1963
Considered a masterpiece almost from the moment that it first aired, this sixty second black and white ad sold a lot of VW Beetles.The beauty of this message is its simplicity- No subtle mind games here, just a straightforward recitation of the advantages of a rear engine that provides excellent traction. The ad actually ran for a couple of years due to the unchanging nature of the Bug. This particular ad is still studied in marketing classes for its effectiveness.
Nissan “Toys” -1997
A clever spot that actually won several awards. The Nissan 300zx got a lot of favorable free publicity when this ad was released. Then and now, the main criticism was the Nissan guy that looked damn creepy and turned up as the tag in every corporate spot. No matter. Ad Age and Time magazines gave this spot their “ad of the year award”. It was a couple of years later that Nissan and Renault joined themselves at the hip and went in a different direction, ad wise.
Chevy Venture/Corvair Greenbrier-2002
The Venture itself was no great shakes as a van, but this spot created a lot of buzz when it hit the airwaves. Chevy paid homage to its paleolithic era of family vans while reassuring current buyers that traveling with a the kids could be fun and comfortable. This spot was probably the only lasting legacy of the late Venture, which expired in 2005. The “morphing” technique was all the rage in these years (as computer special effects were becoming much more sophisticated) and is put to good use in this message.
Ford Ka –2004
The Ka’s Evil Twin spot is the kind of guilty pleasure that you could never get away with in America circa 2011. These spots ran (briefly) in the UK a few years back and caused no small amount of controversy. Whether you think that its unspeakably cruel or just good clean murderous fun, that isn’t the point. The ads raised the profile of the Ka at a time when Ford needed to fend off a whole slew of new competitors from Korea and Japan.
Isuzu I-Mark “Joe Isuzu” ad -1987
Even brilliant advertising couldn’t raise Isuzu from the third tier of Japanese imports in the 80’s and 90’s. But the whole “Joe Isuzu” suite of ads makes for some good clean retro fun. This campaign had legs and ran for over four years in its first incarnation (and was revived briefly a decade later). The whole point of the series was to poke fun at the absurd claims that are often seen in other company’s ads. Journeyman character actor David Leisure gave the commercials their bite with his smarmy, unctuous (and hilarious) delivery. The campaign’s success actually hastened its demise, as the Joe Isuzu label began to be stolen and misused in political campaigns starting in 1988. When politicians steal your ideas, the shark has been jumped.
VW “Auto Show 1949” -1972-73
Nostalgia with a dose of low key product pitch. Of all of the commercials of my younger days, this one made the biggest impression on me. It won a slew of awards for originality and still looks surprisingly fresh today. Note that the spot features two familiar, well known personalities: McLean Stevenson (M*A*S*H) and Wink Martindale (every game show, ever) .
Lexus -1992 (“Steel plate Drum”)
A devastatingly effective visual/aural demonstration of something that is hard to explain. This spot helped bolster the already rising reputation of what was a Mercedes- beating top of the line car. Veteran character actor James Sloyan does the voice over (as he did from the founding until 2009) and the spot makes its point without being boring. Lexus actually got a lot of mileage out of this spot. It ran off and on for two years.
Chevrolet- 1948 (“Work Or Play, It’s Chevrolet”)
http://youtu.be/Ra5RvJKb-6M
True coast to coast network TV was non existent in 1948. The technology of microwave retransmission only allowed the big two networks to promise blanket coverage on the coasts. In the midwest and the south, one station would frequently cherry pick the best programs from two networks and try to piece together a schedule. (ABC and DuMont were both minor networks before 1953) . TV spots were delivered to local stations on film. (Ampex had yet to invent videotape). This commercial was a pioneer because it featured the users of the product and a long form jingle instead of a business suited pitchman performing the hard sell, live, in a hot studio.
Plymouth – 1969 (Just Look What Plymouth’s Up To Now!”)
A breakthrough use of animation and live action. To be sure, cartoon characters had been used to pitch cars before. (Disney characters had shilled for Hudson and Peanuts characters for Falcons years before), but the use of color and the whimsical underdog imagery associated with the Roadrunner character made this campaign a smash. Plymouth managed to capture the baby boom twentysomethings that had not too many years before watched every Roadrunner/Coyote episode and could easily imagine themselves pulling away from Chevys and Fords in their Hi-Po Roadrunner. The ad lost its meaning and purpose when the cars themselves became bloated, cartoonish parodies of their former selves just a couple of years later and the campaign died a natural death.
No list would be complete without shouts from the gallery. What did we miss? I welcome your comments below.
I laughed like a hyena when I saw the Saturday Night Live circumcision in the back seat of a Royal Deluxe II “commercial”.
There some other good ads
The Simpsons did also some cameos in the Toyota Corolla ads for the 1993 model year in Canada.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_V4BRdb534
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zqtIL_HmGk
Renault did a nice ad showing the Renault 21 in the UK as a tribute to the British series “The Prisonner”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyfLbGlGr2s
That Prisoner ad is brilliant!!! One commenter there does observe “Escape being a number by… purchasing product number 21 ?!!”
Be seeing you.
Those VW commercials, both on TV and on billboards were simply the greatest ad series of all.
The greatest single commercial I have ever seen was for Audi. I don’t know when it originally aired, or even if it aired in the US, but my boss at my former company used it as part of a video presentation when hosting customers at our “Innovation Center” in Chicago. That’s the only place I saw it, and it was very effective.
Funny thing about the ad was that I questioned the wisdom of using it, for it called more attention to the car, and away from package design, which was why the customer was at our facility in the first place!
That Ford Ka commercial definitely makes me cringe. I really wish they had run it in the US – it’d be worth it just to watch PETA explode.
That Ka commercial actually had me chuckling believe it or not and I’m not even a hater of cats, it’s the macabre humor of it that I like.
I had to replay the snow plow commercial as it was a simple, honest commercial of a car’s strength, being able to get you to and fro despite the snow. I would love to see someone, say Fiat use a rendition of that idea for their cars. Simple and effective, showcasing something unique or honest about said vehicle and it just might help it to sell.
Great post!
As a longtime auto advertising creative, I wish I’d done this one — perhaps the best spot ever.
Wow – that IS good.
Another great creative effort, albeit for a horrid car:
Wonderful ad. What’s horrid about the EV1?
Volvo has some awesome ads. The Australian ‘Bloody Volvo Driver’ is great too, showing that the company which makes cars for the phobic can have the last laugh. In the UK, there is a running battle between bikers and Volvo drivers. I can honestly say that I’ve been in the same position of this Volvo driver and got a two finger salute from the biker who almost ran me off the road.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUDZlZG5n5s&feature=related
Even their early ads were great- ‘drive a Volvo like you hate it, it’s cheaper than psychiatry.’ I think this ad campaign did more than any other for creating the mythology of durability for the marque.
I also liked the “It’s not your Uncle Olaf’s Volvo” campaign when the 850GLT came out. They had some great printed ads too:
Come on, now, you are all forgetting about the single greatest car commercial ever made! I’m not a fan of compact cars, I usually don’t care for foreign cars, and I could go either way on convertibles (they are nice, but I wouldn’t want one as my only car), but every time I see this commercial, I want to go right out and buy a VW Cabrio. It’s my all time favorite car commercial, and its for a car I don’t even want:
Joe Isuzu was and still is the #1 car ad in my book. It was a shame what they did with his reprieve. They took away the simplicity that made the original spots so good.
I vaguely remember the Nissan ads with the “creepy” guy. I actually liked them. The “Dogs love trucks” may have been my favorite.
Most commercials currently are just plain irritating.
I can’t help it – this VW ad from 1969 is my favorite. Nephew Harold inherits it all!
My former creative director wrote that spot when he was at DDB! Classic spot.
This Russian Volga ad is great too. It says as much about status and class in the Russian mindset post-communism as a Lexus or Merc ad does to a westerner.
I think that given how primitive Russian advertising was in the ’90s, this is brilliant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFvtEvpdNI0
what is really intriguing is that the Honda Del Sol cost three times as much as the Volga.
I love auto advertising; as a younger member here, thanks for the look back on some ads I wasn’t aware of. The “Toys” ad is very cool, but a bit of a rip-off of “Toy Story,” which came out two years before.
I found this collection of several more recent ads: http://pricinginsider.carsdirect.com/2011/05/20/best-were-back-car-commercials-of-the-past-decade/
Some good ones in there — I particularly like the two Caddy ads and the Jeep ad.
And I’ll admit that I’m probably the only person who liked the Oldsmobile “Start Something” campaign (there’s an example of one in the link above). It may have been too little too late, but I thought the campaign was cool for the time.
“as a younger member here”
We’re honored that you have joined us.
True story about the Eminem/200 commercial. I was at a Super Bowl party with a bunch of thirty-somethings, most of them doing better than I do, watching the game. We were invited by my wife’s coworker, we came mostly to be polite, but what the hell, it was free beer and munchies. I didn’t know anybody and worst of all, I was the oldest dog in the kennel.
As the evening progresses, I struck up a convo with some of the kids, turns out they were mostly software writers or some such stuff, no motorheads. Great. I don’t have a dog in the hunt in the game, and little else to do but to check out these guys freakin’ awesome looking wives…
The few I did manage to talk cars with all drove mostly expensive foreign stuff, Audis, Lexus, Infiniti, etc. Great, not only am I the oldest horndog in the room, I’m also the brokest. Can this get any worse?
Then it happens. It was a natural lull in the conversation when the commercial came on, I recognized the sounds of the song (from my kids’ blasting the Eminem CD’s back in the day), and the whole room was staring at the big screen. Even though we’re 2-1/2 hours west of Detroit, many of the folks around here either have relatives in the D or are from the D. If not, they’re Lions, Tigers, Red Wings or Pistons fans. The D is not a stranger to them.
For two minutes, everyone in the room was staring at the screen, taking in the commercial. Somehow, my feeble, broke-ass, horndog brain realized that I was witnessing something these rich twiddles weren’t aware was happening. It was as if they were truly mesmerized. I was watching myself watching these folks reaction to the commercial.
After the end, you could almost feel an electric surge go through the room, it was almost like a call to arms. Suddenly, the room wakes up with noise and motion, and everyone, everyone is talking about the ad. I was blown away by their reaction, and frankly my own, too. I wanted to go out and start building a bridge or something huge.
I haven’t seen any of those folks in almost a year, and I seriously doubt that any of them shucked their A5 for a 200. But for a moment there, the commercial had their attention, and I truly think they were considering what they were going to do after watching that commercial.
I still haven’t built that bridge, though. I can’t even fix my damned Barcalounger. Kudos to the folks who came up with the original commercial, it really had an impact.
Of course, living in this market, we get all kinds of permutations of the commercial now, using the same music and singers and a few of the same images to hawk year end sales on minivans and 300’s and etc.
They had better come up with another good one for next year’s Super Bowl. We’re waiting…
Does anyone recall the Season 13 Top Gear commercial challenge? Funny stuff! Here’s the last segment.
http://www.topgear.com/uk/videos/tg_makes_a_vw_ad_part_4
Local dealer advertising can be a real time capsule. Tons are on youtube like this gem from Chicago early 80s
I’d totally forgotten that Prisoner Renault 21 spot – thanks for a blast from the past there Stéphan!
_
I’ve always felt Peugeot’s Kim Bassinger spot from the 90s was a fine advert:
Excellent soundtrack, good sense of humour, and memorable for what it was selling.
–
I also (perhaps predictably) have a real soft spot for the FIAT Coupe’s UK launch advert:
… not sure it translates though if you didn’t grow up in a country where boys wanted to be train drivers.
–
The Saab 9000 “Saab Suite” deserves mentioning if only for the stunt driving:
… really gets over how surprisingly agile the 9000 is to drive. It’s more a short publicity film than an advert I suppose… I think the individual “acts” ran as TV ads though.
–
Citroën’s C4 “alive with technology” campaign deserves a mention:
… it’s been so widely parodied that some of the freshness is lost now, but still makes me smile.
–
Last but not least (and since it’s nearly xmas) a nauseatingly twee, but very memorable Austin Rover spot from my childhood:
When I first saw this ad, it was a total WTF? moment for me. It seriously took me a solid minute to realize what had just taken place on screen.
http://youtu.be/WCtipr5B0Hk
Then I busted out laughing…
The Ford Sportka ones really are funny. And Joe Isuzu was something we were using in my advertising classes when the commercials were still airing for the first time.
Oh crap, I forgot this one: http://youtu.be/uG0Ba-wef6M
The best part is when the two ‘Vettes meet in mid air and the kids wink at one another…
Hand built by robots. If you were in the UK in 1979 this ad needs no further introduction:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fXV6KzhBbM
And for the record, I thought they were cute (and still do.) So shoot me…
Citroen’s legendary Goddess had two very memorable ads, both intended to highlight the car’s unique features:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-QZxohrImM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF9oYC7HhUQ
And no history of local car dealer ads is complete without this classic:
Hand built by robots! Man I knew I was forgetting one 🙂
I thought they were cute too…
As for “go see cal”? the mind boggles!
The 1969 Pontiac GTO ad with Paul Revere and the Raiders is awesome and the the 1969 Holden Monaro GTS ad is worth tracking down too.