Do you talk to your friends and family when an ad comes on TV? “That was great!” or, “That ad sucks.” How about, “If I see that ad one more time, I’m going to kick in the TV screen.”
Trade publication Adweek has named its top ten ads of 2011, and its editors say even they were surprised that three car ads from the last eleven months were among their top 10—including the one that nabbed the top honor.
The ad for the Nissan Leaf, ranked 9th, shows what the world would be liked if we tried to run everything on gasoline. Our favorite was the dentist drill. Ouch!
The Leaf is an all-electric vehicle, a hatchback that gets about 80 to 100 miles on an electric charge before it needs to be recharged.
“Born of Fire,” broke all the rules of advertising, and especially Super Bowl advertising when it aired last February to the biggest TV audience of the year.
The ad, which scored 3rd on Adweek’s list, is two minutes long, and tries to make the point that Detroit, perhaps the most derided city in American culture today, is where the best automotive hardware comes from. The tagline that Chrysler introduced in this ad: “Imported from Detroit.”
The ad, for the Volkswagen Passat, features a kid dressed as Darth Vadar trying to use “The Force” to make things happen. For most of the ad, the lid is unsuccessful and disappointed. But at the end, the VW starts up as the pint-sized Darth Vadar commands it.
The kid’s wonderment comes through the opaque mask, so kudos to the actor in the Star Wars costume. We see it was the Dad, from inside the kitchen, using the remote starter to power up the car on cue.
The spot’s metrics are terrific: 44 million views on YouTube, a reported 6.8 billion impressions worldwide, more than $100 million in earned media.
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