Car Commercials, the good, the bad, and the annoying!

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speterson1

Lexus gets my vote as the weirdest ad lately - a lady in black spandex descends into a room on a wire system a la Mission Impossible, then a translucent spider web type thingy opens up and she pushes an ignition switch, which then takes the viewer to the same switch in the new Lexus.

Car looks nice, but I can't imagine what point they're trying to get across. The new Lexus is a spider which will suck you in? International superspies and cat burglers - this is the car for you? No idea, strange ad.

pillager

Hey Cousin'

The race between Grand Cherokee and BMW must have been like a turtle vs a panther, enit? Awesome. Hope to see volcano ash soon.

tmart

where black cars start entering a traffic circle and fill it up. Camara pulls back and it becomes a phono turntable, complete with tone arm. Don't really care for Chevys, but the ad is awesome.

badgerfan

Only problem with that ad is that a lot of the younger generation hardly knows what a record looks like unless their parents showed them.

davem2001

good point!

tmart

typo on camera.

andre1969

the "Fake Mini" commercials yet? I first noticed a flyer that came in the mail, warning that the market was getting flooded with a glut of impostor Mini Coopers. At first it looked all official and such, but then I opened it up and they showed all sorts of hysterical stuff like a 1974 or so Dart with "Mini Cooper S" lettering pasted on the back. The copy underneath read something like "At first glance, this is a very close replica of a Mini Cooper S. But the astute observer will note that the Mini Cooper S has two exhaust pipes, not one. And they are at the center of the car. Not off to the side. Or dragging on the ground."

They also had an old Lincoln Mark IV with a big Mini Cooper badge on the front, and the copy read "sometimes an oversized logo can make a large car appear to be smaller. This particular example almost slipped past un-noticed, until an observer happened to take a tape measure to it"

The other night I saw a commercial, and it was pretty funny. They tried to back some big 60's battlecruiser into a parallel spot that, in all seriousness, a real MINI would probably have a problem with, and it took out one of the parked cars! Then they showed a MINI zipping through a slalom course of road cones. Then along comes the Mark IV, and it just plows them all down.

Pretty cute overall, even if it is poking fun at the types of cars that I love! :shades:

i_luv_toyota

I find these latest commercials featuring these kids making parents feel guilty if they did not by a GM car with OnStar very annoying.

One part of the commercial that annoys me the most is when one of the kids says, "Who's gonna tell you if the Check Engine light is something serious, or nothing at all?" The reason it annoys me is for one, why would a kid care about what lights up on the dashboard, and two, a CEL means nothing but a loose gas cap like 99% of the time anyway. It should be a "Check Gas Cap" light instead.

But, yeah, I'm all for the elimination of using kids in car ads all together. Glad Mazda got the memo, apparently GM must have lost it...

gambit293

Yup... reminds me of those JIF peanut butter commercials. "Moms that care pick JIF..."

Talk about exploitive.

john_324

...of being a performance car fan...I never notice any ad that features minivans, children, the words "3rd row seating" or any talk of how many cupholders the vehicle contains...

On the other hand, my first thought when seeing the new Pontiac G-6 ads was "can the exhaust note really sound that good??"

lhess

where the couple competes to see who can get ready for work first and drive the Mariner (I think that's the right vehicle - the car does nothing for me, just think the commercial is cute). She sleeps in her work clothes one night so when he hops in the shower, she's in the mariner...It's lighthearted, no whiney kids in the commercial...fun for a change!!

seminole_kev

http://counterfeitmini.org/

utter

That is a good one. I also enjoy the VW ad that has the man dancing through the street to the "singing in the rain" rip-off. Pretty entertaining.

loncray

My favorite car ad to this day, some 6 or 7 years later, is that Jetta ad in which everything starts working in synch with the Jetta's windshield wipers. It was simple, quiet, no kids, and fascinating!

Of course, I grew up with those Doyle Dane Bernbach VW ads - like the two tire tracks in the snow, and 'How does the snowplow driver get to work?'. I cannot name an ad campaign, for any product, that is as quietly effective as those.

utter

Sounds so familiar...wish we had some linkies.

"My favorite car ad to this day, some 6 or 7 years later, is that Jetta ad in which everything starts working in synch with the Jetta's windshield wipers. It was simple, quiet, no kids, and fascinating!"

gambit293

This much I can tell you:

The song was Da Da Da by Trio. (in the Jetta commercial)

seminole_kev

I really liked the "wedding day" ad they had for the Jetta a couple of years ago. Had great music (was by a guy who goes under both "Spy" and "J.Ralph") and was just very interesting.

It's in a serious tone and you think the guy is late to his own wedding (giving marketing a chance to show the Jetta's power) but when he finally gets there, it appears he's trying to interupt the wedding because he loves the girl. Of course you could probably see it a couple of different ways, but that was my take on it.

Great commercial.

fintail

The Tacoma commercial where the guy has this small truck with a lawnmower engine is pretty funny...just for the little trusk used. The outright admission of overcompensation as a reason to buy the Tacoma is lame, but that tinny little truck cracked me up...I think it was a converted Yugo.

anythngbutgm

What's the deal with the G6 commercial claiming it has "more standard Base V6 horsepower than a Nissan Altima"??? The "Base" VQ6 is at 240 and the SE-R is 255. The G6 is 200?

Sorry, the G6 wouldn't stand a chance against an Altima (or Accord for that matter). The Nissan would run circles around that hunk O' garbage without question.

davem2001

They must be comparing a "base" G6 to a "base" 4-cylinder Altima which has 175hp. Any company has lawyers, fact checkers, etc.. review an ad before it goes on the air, they aren't going to blatantly lie about something that is factual.

loncray

No, the Da Da Da music was a different commercial - the two college kids with the little plastic puppet thing, and the chair they pick up by the side of the road, then drop off. The music is I think called 'Synch', and I've seen the music linked on the VW website, but I can't find the commercial itself anyplace.

i_luv_toyota

Those ads focus mostly on gimmicks like the remote start and the multi-paneled moonroof. Many people can live without these features, which seem so important to Pontiac ad execs.

Another OnStar annoyance, the HotButton. I am particularly aggravated by the one where the person working at a space station ready to launch a space shuttle by pushing a button, but then stops just before actually pushing it. Then the announcer says something like, "Save that push for something really important" and then goes on about a lease deal on a lame base-model Malibu. Like leasing a car the government already has plenty of is more important than launching a space shuttle. Gimme a break, please.

And the song, "Push It" by Salt n Peppa (yes, that's how it's spelled) doesn't help matters much either, as the song was annoying when it came out more than a decade ago and still is to this day.

i_luv_toyota

Those late '90's VW Jetta ads were probably the only ads I've actually ever liked, especially the one mentioned with everything being in synch with sweeping wipers and blinking turn signals. Ah, I'm sad those days have passed.

My favorite ads now are the "Moving Forward" truck ads by Toyota, in particular the one where they get a Tundra and the boat in tow airborn. The ads for their cars aren't nearly as good.

davem2001

You get posts like the one above (#2385)- they hate a brand so much that even that brand's advertising is terrible - yet, I'd say to the average person, all car ads are pretty much the same, and not too much different from an ad for beer or toothpaste or deodorant. They all have music in them (of course "my brand" has good music and the brand I hate doesn't! LOL!). They sometimes try to have humor in them.
People forget, the car companies don't make these ads. They hire an ad agency...maybe the same ad agency that makes that terrible commercial for the brand you hate maybe also makes the great ad for the brand you love.

lemko

...Mitsubishi had pretty good music in some of its recent ads but I wouldn't be caught dead near any Mitsu dealer. Nissan had the clever toy 300ZX commercials about ten years ago. Cadillac's ads really work well as I like both Cadillac and Led Zeppelin.

lhess

I think Caddy has some of the best ads out there. I really liked the one where the guy traveled through time and saw all the past cars and when it got to the current, the butt-kickin' music cranked up. I won't be caught driving a Caddy until I'm about 80!!

gambit293

Well...it's not as if a car manufacturer has nothing to do with the ad creation. The maker still greenlights the ad and/or lays out the theme for a large national campaign.

davem2001

sure, whatever ----"My" car company makes great ads and the ones I hate just coincidentally make terrible ads...

danf1

commercial pulling the Escalade and boat out of the lake is a good one. I'm not a fan of Lincoln, but I like the ad.