This is not a test. Do not attempt to adjust your display. What you are watching is an advertisement for a new car. But before you hit the jump and find out what car this is supposed to make you want to buy (trust me, you won’t be able to tell by watching alone), see if you can guess the answer.
Did you guess “2012 Ford Focus?” If so, you might want to look into collecting some money. Sure, by Ford Marketing’s standards, this very post (and your every comment) helps make this video a success… but what price commentary? Doug’s a likable puppet with a winning approach to the female of the species and some snappy dialogue writers, but he does tend to distract from… wait, what are they advertising again? Something about a car?
Here, for example, an “exterior”-themed video doesn’t even show what the Focus looks like on the road. Why go to the trouble of styling a car as handsomely as the Focus only to hide it behind an aggressively awkward orange puppet? Even the interior video shows the whole car, albeit briefly.
I’m sure plenty of people who know far more than I about the dark arts of marketing will say that any kind of buzz or attention for a new product is a good thing. I get that. The problem here is of limited attention and recall. When you’re selling a product that competes in a market awash with more brands, trims and nameplates than any consumer can keep straight, it’s fairly important that consumers understand the product’s identity. Or Ford’s the marketing plan for it’s hugely important new compact entry to coast off of existing perceptions generated by the outgoing model? Because the only real impressions that these videos leave are of the Focus’s banal features (heated mirrors!) and the comedic bounty that is corporate culture. When even the grocery-getter segment is experiencing something of a styling arms race, Ford can’t afford to hide its most important launch of the year behind a freaking puppet.
Too bizarre to comment I guess, but people seem to like the current “random sh!t happens” advertisements. This may or may not work, too early to tell. From my perspective, cars are still emotional purchases, unlike Doritos and beer, and therefore the “imported from Detroit” type ads win.
What car does it make me want to buy? None. Stupid.
John
Huh, I was thinking this was an ad for an online show that revolves around a cheap Kermit copy, guess I was wrong. BTW I’ve made better puppets.
Reminds me of Kias hamster ad and VWs Passat superbowl ad, you could “advertise” any car by barely editing their ads (shows ya how much they’re actually advertising their cars), they bring no interest to the car, and how are Kindergartners getting jobs as ad writers?
Maybe they should have called him Carmitt.
I actually like the ads. I had a good chuckle watching a few of them on another site, good fun.
If they didn’t get you focused on the Focus they weren’t doing their job as ads.
I like the ads, and I like the Focus, but the ads are entertainment, and the Focus is a very expensive small car that relies on the fascination with electronic toys (and Ford isn’t the only one) to create the perception of “luxury” in an econobox to justify inflated prices. And that’s what these ads are pushing.
If the bones of the car are any good (the base model), it will sell (but I’d be willing to be that a base hatchback model makes Ford very little profit, thus the “focus” on optional features).
I’ve been pricing Foci on order from local dealers, and I’ve seen SE trims @ 21 – 23k MSRP – keep in mind that there are the higher level SES and Platinum trims above that. I figure a clapped-out Platinum hatch could go for $28k, which is eye-popping, to say the least.
I was thinking along the lines of active safety features after watching the first video, which didn’t help me that much further since a lot of manufacturers now have systems like lane departure warning and all kinds of sensors that somehow prepare stuff for a pending crash…Still, I thought Volvo might be quirky enough to do something like this.
Then…I considered the source and the mildly negative tone of the article, which lead me to believe it must be an American brand.
Then I was confused and the comments didn’t work, but the add didn’t interest me enough to look into it further elsewhere, but just enough to revisit this post now to find out.
I don’t know if this kind of marketing works for a car though. I think it might work for a, say at maximum $300 product (give or take), that people could maybe impulse buy because it sparks their curiosity. For a ($2X000) car though…I agree with comment above that it’s usually an emotional decision to buy a car or not but still, I think a mix of looks, features and technical information play an important role in that. Therefore, probably a missed oppertunity for Ford to emphasize the qualities of the product now that they actually have a great product to boast about.
Lately it seems like adverts in general are being made for the sake of impressing the other “guys” that make adverts.
Stupid ad for stupid people? They always say Know your audience… But if that’s the case, who is Kia going after??
With Kia it depends on the ad, with some an older Soul ad they went after hamster-mided people, with another they showed it was “different” and head turning (an inaccurate but good ad for the car, especially for teen buyers) thus for teens, and now they have an ad for their Toyota sedan knock off “No ordinary sedan” that I guess is aimed to the movie-going crowd… I dunno, I still say they use 7 year olds to write these.
But yes, almost ever since CGI became household ad-makers have seemingly been trying to impress themselves, add to their animation reels, or us, yet they’ve forgotten that theres a product to sell.
Don’t know don’t care, but it is proof that viral videos have jumped the shark.