Super Bowl Car Commercials: They're Baaack!
Are you one of those who don’t watch the Super Bowl for the game, but for the ads? After taking mostly a leave of absence during carmageddon, carmakers will be out in force this time. There will be so many car commercials that “it looks like there will be auto gridlock in Super Bowl ads,” says USA Today. To get more impressions, carmakers are using YouTube to make the most out of the expensive airtime. Here comes a selection.
Volkswagen will also have a commercial for the new new Beetle. And it won’t even show a car!
The Kia Optima is not only popular the world over, but also with outerworldly aliens, if this spot is to be believed:
GM will splurge their new money found on Wall Street and will, if the rumors are correct, air between five and eight spots. Here is the first of the new crop of Chevy ads. Will the dealers be amused? (Rumor has it this spot has been yanked “because of a dispute.”)
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
More by Bertel Schmitt
Comments
Join the conversation
It's not just a $3 million ad buy. This very post demonstrates how companies now use the Super Bowl well beyond the air time they buy. The ads are now part of fairly elaborate publicity campaigns that start, in some cases like Audi, as soon as they get done with last year's work. Even the companies that don't decide to make SB ad buys, play the game of will they or won't they. As a result, the quintessential skeptical car site, TTAC, is giving VW, Chevy, Hyundai, Audi, Mercedes Benz and Dodge free advertising (along with a mention of Honda, Ford and Toyota).
Man, I love capitalism. You make mock PR, but when it's done right, it's science and art. And very effective.
As an aside, this brings up an interesting question. The NFL is notorious for giving any advertiser who uses the phrase "Super Bowl" a hard time if they aren't some kind of official NFL sponsor. Hence the ads for Best Buy talking about the "Big Game" (I wonder if I can trademark "Big Game" and enforce it). Yet most of the advertisers on the Super Bowl broadcast are not actually in a business relationship with the NFL. So how come the NFL picks on the corner bar but doesn't mind when GM Communications uses "Super Bowl" all over the place? Well, in part because all those $3 million dollar ad buys make it possible for the tv networks to pay the NFL billions for the broadcasting rights.
As Neal Rubin of the Detroit News pointed out recently, there is one kind of business that can exploit the phrase Super Bowl all it wants to and that's the media. Ain't the First Amendment grand?
BMW's advanced diesel ad was pretty awesome (it's on Youtube). The Passat ad is kind of stupid, but at least now we know what a Passat will start at when they go on sale. Didn't watch any of the GM ads because why would I want to buy a GM? The Chrysler 200/Eminem ad seemed kind of pointless to me.