A Little Morning Schadenfreude: The "Mediocrity" Viral Campaign

by Jack Baruth

Published: November 4th, 2011

a little morning schadenfreude the mediocrity viral campaign

Subaru’s North American operations have long been known for advertising catastrophes, but rarely have they laid an egg as big as the October 2010 viral campaign for the “2011 Mediocrity”. The car chosen to be the butt of the joke was an old Kia Optima, which simply proved that neither the ad agency nor Subaru had the guts to start with a brand-new Camry. If Subaru was hoping for a sales boost for the new Legacy, it didn’t happen.

The campaign’s long gone, but that doesn’t mean we can’t take a moment to look at some pictures and make some snarky comments, right?

Let’s start by looking at the new Legacy:

Who knew that the current Acura TL had any fans in the styling departments, eh? Is anything about that car recognizably “Subaru”? Let’s take a look at another Subaru and count the similarities:

Not seeing it, really. How about this?

Now we are getting somewhere. Except that’s a Camry. Oh well. Let’s go see what Kia is up to.

If you ask me, it would be a nice, sharp comeback for Kia to make a “Mediocrity II” campaign featuring a lightly fiberglassed current-generation Legacy… but it looks like they’re saving the boldness for the design.

Jack Baruth

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3 of 47 comments

RedStapler on Nov 05, 2011

The Styling Mojo that the 05-09 Legacy lost appears to have reappeared in the new Impreza. From the Xt to the Window within a Window on the SVX to the Edsel inspired front clip on the 1st Gen Tribeca Subaru has a long tradition of styling mishaps. For people who want cheap reliable Subaru has almost no competition. Toyota killed the AWD Matrix and the Suzuki SX4 has no distribution.

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05lgt on Nov 07, 2011

Call me a fanboi if you must, but that brat looks better than anything else in this post. As to Subi design of late, if my current car gets totaled I'm looking at the Koreans first.

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- Dolorean on Nov 07, 2011
  
  +1 fanboi. Love the Sooby BRAT. Totally useless for most things other than having two friends in those weird plastic jump seats in the bed while dragging another on a snow-saucer through snowy streets in the winter.
  
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