Last week, Jack opined it’s high time a certain American nameplate needs to start leading itself with marketing — brash, notice-it-even-if-you-don’t-want-to marketing — instead of by the short leash provided when one tries engineering their way into the hearts and wallets of American consumers.
Never one to pass up a chance to dive down the rabbit hole of automotive marketing, it didn’t take long for my browser history to be clogged with search terms, finding great car ads I remember from when, as a kid, my grubby little hands would anticipate the arrival of a new car magazine.
Porsche and VW have had some great campaigns over the years, with a series of mid-’90s print ads that included the “Kills Bugs Fast” tagline ranking pretty high in my personal top 40. The whole design of the campaign — from the illusion of speed on a static page to the copy itself — set my young imagination afire and led to lusting for an Arena Red 993 Turbo, which remains unabated to this day.
No discussion of great car ads is complete without a mention of VW’s ‘Think Small’ campaign. Armed with a relatively paltry amount of marketing cash, VW hired the Doyle Dane Bernbach marketing firm, who proceeded to knock it out of the park with more than a dose of wit and self-deprecating humor. Full-page ads with acres of white space drew the reader’s eyes, while the creative copy kept them there.
Deploying a rock star, weird rocks n’ trees stuff, ads laden with innuendo — there’s plenty from which to choose. What’s your favourite automotive marketing campaign?
Un Pimp Mine Auto.
Genius from VW.
Dr. Oldsmobile and his motley crue in the late 60s early 70s.
There will be a certain population of responders here who are simple minded and immature enough to go with Peter Stormare.
Count me in, too.
The fact that it has been 11(!) years since “unpimp ze auto” and I can still remember all three commercial just proves it is the best.
Also didn’t it annoy the German overlords who thought VWoA was making fun of them? If so that just grants the campaign even more brownie points.
ditto. Unpimp the auto
also. the VW GTI fast ads. Brilliant.
Hi
Take the Alternate Route.
Mitsubishi’s “Wider is Better”.
The best part of it is it really was Pontiac’s ad, but for some reason any time I talk to someone about it they recall it being Mitsubishi 3000GTs ad.. haha.
Followed by Datsun’s “Black gold”
See I wonder if all these wonderful brands of yesteryear forgot what made people want them…
What was funny about Pontiac’s campaign is that the Grand Prix used it for had a narrower track than several of its competitors, including the Ford Taurus and I believe some other GM models as well.
And whoever told you it was Mitsubishi and not Pontiac was incorrect. Google “wider is better” and you’ll see Grand Prix’s and not much else. If you add “3000GT” to “wider is better”, you get some videos of those cars racing Pontiacs.
2000 Ford Taurus
61.6″ front, 62.1″ rear
2000 Pontiac Grand Prix
61.7″ front, 61.1-61.2″ rear
2000 Buick Regal
62″ front, 61.3″ rear
2000 Chrysler Concorde
62.4″ front, 62″ rear
Lol so if wider is indeed better, then pretty much anything was better than the car that boasted of it most.
No, no, no. The Pontiac Wide Track slogan goes clear back to the early 60s if not the late 50s. David McDavid Pontiac even had in their TV commercials a Great Dane named “Wide Track”.
“Right, Wide Track?”
“WOOF!”
They were racing on Wide Tracks, right?
The Hummer campaigns of “Like Nothing Else” worked great (The happy jack ad especially). So did the Toyota Tundra commercials when it first came out.
My favourite automobile marketing campaign is the one-make racing series. The Honda/Michelin Challenge (Civics). The Rothmans Challenge Cup (Porsche 944s). Players/GM Challenge (F-bodies). Micra Cup. Porsche Supercup. Ferrari Challenge. The best part is that the racing is always fantastic in these series.
Can’t forget good ‘ol Joe Isuzu, of course..
Still more honest than most politicians (of any party)
Mike, love your avatar.
++ on Joe Isuzu. My favorite one was when he was spying on a Toyota dealership behind a bush and the Toyota customers were doing that stupid jumping up for joy (worst ad campaign ever). I wish I could find it on youtube.
Best print ‘ad’ was the National Lampoon one of the floating Bug–“If Ted Kennedy drove a VW …”
My favorite spoof ‘ad’ was the Saturday Night Live skit of the Jewish Rabbi doing a circumcise in the back of a Lincoln Continental while driving in potholed New York.
Also the “trunk monkey” ads by a dealership.
The crash test of a G Wagon is pretty good. There was a Porsche ad years ago that was something that related the 911 to men as diamonds to women.
Chevy Trucks & Bob Seger’s Like a Rock. That campaign went on for years. Always thought it did the job, and did it well.
@Frank Galvin – agreed. That was the 1st thing that came to mind.
Agree it worked very well for Chevy, too well IMHO. Nothing against Chevy but I used to like that song.
That one always made me think of a broken down Chevy, immovable, like a rock. I don’t think that was their intention.
I don’t know if it’s my *favorite*, but I was highly amused by Jaguar’s “Mark Your Territory” sales event. A brand with a *cat* as a mascot urging its customers to mark their territory: you can’t make this stuff up.
At the time I told my dad I thought they should have run video ads with the cars backing up to walls and revving repeatedly.
It probably suffers from being too close/contemporary, but the “British Villians” series for Jaguar that began with the Superbowl ad (Sir Ben, Hiddleston, and Strong) is not so bad either.
Now all they need is a non-crashing infotainment system and they’ll go on my list!
I’m with the good Principal Dan’s “Dr. Olds” ads of the late 1960s, but it would be very hard to beat the VW campaigns of the late 60s – early 70’s. Not only on TV, but on billboards and magazines.
No wonder why VWs were so popular.
I didn’t buy any of it, though. Never a VW fan. I did like the “Thing”, though.
Now, those Lincoln ads throw me with that Matt guy and the Chevy ads drive me nuts.
I must be getting old ;-[
I concur with your assessment. Not much on VW as a GM guy, but they have had some good adverts.
Lincoln? Gawd I hate those commercials with “hey now, hey now” matthew mcconaughey. Always looks like he’s rolling a booger in between his fingers. More than anything else…., I just don’t care for him.
Chevy…., Yeah, I feel your pain.
They have the hands down worst commercials around…., “with real people” talking about how many awards the car or truck has won. I don’t care about their opinion…., and their trucks are ugly as hell now.
I’m guessing their advertisers are someone in the family at GM.
Mine has to be the Mazda “Zoom Zoom” ads. I always enjoyed them.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-N_6atFRtJuw/VIcAaKCxl3I/AAAAAAAAQG4/0s-4M1C2VNA/s1600/zoom-zoom.png
https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQsWM69Gzecwl-65kYBRwrp7DVxc7lV5NTyFYaANZccJ7VLk0Lz
http://mazda-classic-frey.de/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/2001-Mazda-Zoom-Zoom-1024×722.jpg
Don’t forget the 1970s “Piston engine goes boing-boing-boing, but the Mazda goes hmmmmmmmm”.
I’d like to see the “zoom-zoom”, suit & tie kid now!
I hope he’s not living under a bridge somewhere all whacked-out on drugs, which seems to be the case with all too many former child actors.
Never liked the zoom zoom, as they were done at a time when Mazda didn’t have much for zoom.
If we’re going to limit to print, then six words: “Lord Vader, you car is ready.”
As a Brit who only occasionally visits the US, I liked the Chevy “Truck Guy” ads best. The brash, direct advertising that you Americans get is much more fun than the faux-highbrow stuff that we get in the UK.
Our Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is very heavy handed, and any suggestion of speed or excitement is frowned upon. As a consequence, several excellent TV adverts that are aired in the rest of Europe and elsewhere in the world are not shown in the UK.
https://www.asa.org.uk/advice-online/motoring.html
Oh, What a Feelng!
And tactically, buying the back cover of Nat Geo for donkeys.
Print adverts from the ’60s, besides VW, Pontiac’s were equally legendary though completely different. Made them look so glamourous. And wide.
I don’t know much about TV ads from that time. VW had some terrific commercials in the late ’90s, i.e. “Da Da Da” and “Pink Moon”. I also liked that BMW campaign with, say, kids jumping off a high cliff into the water, “It’s not a feeling you can get everyday” (cut to BMW on winding road) “or is it?”
Then there’s the ’70s Chrysler Cordoba ad with Ricardo Montalban extolling the soft Corinthian leather. Laugh all you want, but it sold cars, and *everyone* who lived through the ’70s (in the US anyway) remembers it.
I’ll give a +1 to all the Montalban ads. He didn’t just hawk the Cordoba, he was selling K-cars and K-car variants well into the ’80s.
“Have you driven a Ford… lately?” – I haven’t, but I still remember the jingle 20-some years after it was last in their TV ads.
I still remember Ford’s “Quality is Job One” ads – and years later, a Ford exec admitting it was never more meaningful than just a slogan.
Ford’s “Quality is Job One”
I had a repair done to a ’84 Ranger I had. They put the shifter in wrong and it wouldn’t go into 1st or reverse. The Service Manager was arguing that there was nothing wrong with it. He was always arumentative. My brother holds out the bill and demands that he read out the top line on the bill. He whispered, “Quality is Job One”. We both said, “what?, didn’t hear you!” He reads it again but loader, “Quality is Job One”. We both yelled out, “Then what the F^ck happened to 1st and reverse?”
It got a big laugh out of the staff and customers since he was so well liked by one and all.
Ford has a better idea (lightbulb)
This one sticks out in my mind.
At the same time, they used a brown paper covered Taurus driving in the “Enterprise, we’ll pick you up!” ad.
This was also around the same time as the vacuum ad theme with a woman singing, “Hoover, nobodyyyy does it like youuuu!”
So many great ad campaigns.
Not mentioned yet, Lee Iaccoca in 80’s doing his spiel for the Chrysler Mini Van. He, along with some gubment $$, put the company back on the map.
VW: Farfignuggen or however you spell it was good as well.
edit: Caravan
“If you find a better car, buy it.” Great line. What I liked was how the other two of the Big Three pulled with Chrysler: “If we can’t sell you a Chevy, please consider a Dodge”, or whatever it was. Been a couple of decades since I read Iacocca’s book.
Late 80’s “Cadillac Style” jingle and long format TV ads. See YouTube. Song is so catchy, and the video is so 80’s. Legwarmers, yachts, skeet shooting, polo players, tennis, saxophone solo. I love every second of it.
The only way to travel…
Fahrvergnuegen.
Oh…and “dogs love trucks!”
“Beeeesst of Aaaaaall, It’s A Ca-di-llllllac” (sung long, to the hat wearing guy complaining the 8-6-4 isn’t running like his prior four Cadillacs; cues up Frankie on the cassette player-off for scotch snd some Torch Singing at the Rainbow Room)
Endless radio ads in nyc in the early 80’s. (yes kids, radio ads were once important)
/s
Current worst ? Chevy folks acting surprised at the existence of New Chevrolets. The christmas ones were even worse. Not actors ? God, I hope they *are* for their sake.
Best ? I like the current Alfa ads never mind the car, and Fiat Viagra ad was funny, again, never mind the car, and older ones, Mercedes, back when they actually meant is “Das Beste oder Nichts”. I liked the original Infiniti rocks and trees ad, so what do I know ?
Chevy’s “Real people, not actors” and the Denis Leary Ford truck ads are so, so terrible.
I usually despise ad campaigns that use well-known music (Cadillac w ‘Break On Through’, Toyota w ‘Saved By Zero’) but Mitsubishi used relatively obscure songs from fairly unknown artists that led me to learn more about their music. Specifically ‘Days Gone By’ from Dirty Vegas and ‘Heads Hill Roll’ from The Fall.
edit: Cadillac’s tagline was Break On Through, but they had to use ‘Rock and Roll’ from Led Zep because Doors drummer John Densmore refused to allow Cadillac to use the song ‘Break On Through’.
In the late 80s there was a “Born to be wild” Mercury Cougar ad.
Fahrvergnügen – need I say more?
Also, Audi’s “Vorsprung durch Technik” slogan was cool as well.
Volvo had a great ad where they had a picture of a turbo wagon next to a Ferrari or Lamborghini with a U-Haul trailer attached. The tag line indicated that to a radar gun, they both look identical.
‘Until Ferrari Builds A Wagon, This Is It.’
“It’s got nothing to do with your Vorsprung durch Technik, you know.”
I also got a kick out of my dad’s stories about a used car lot in SoCal in the early ’70’s that had radio spots proclaiming “we lose money on every deal, but we make it up in volume!”.
That was an ad with a Porsche. You’re thinking about “the basic idea behind the Volvo turbo wagon”:
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s—hGAJf3k–/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/1342374046470391437.jpg
Cadillac’s campaign for the 2008 CTS with Kate Walsh was exceptionally well done, I thought.
I remember Nissan having a bunch of cool TV spots in the 90s, better ads than most of their cars. The “Dogs love trucks” and the GI Joe/Barbie RC 300Z stick out in my mind.
Volkswagen/DDB are way beyond everything, but there are/were some cool others too. Don’t know if they ran in the US, but I like the Jeep ads where they drive out into the mountains, then sit by the campfire while some other driver in the distance keeps rejoicing about having made it all the way up. Guy shrugs and says, “it’s his first Jeep”.
Great Honda Rube Goldberg ad, “The Cog”. Google it if you don’t know it.
Mercedes 1st-gen SLK magazine ad, showing the car from behind, covered with shattered insects: “SLK with ceramic brakes. No-one stops quicker.” I can’t help cracking up when imagining some bug flying behind an SLK, than trapped in the brake lights and WTF — *SPLORCH* … got me LOL even now.
One more and I’ll shut up: the Audi ad where they drove a quattro sedan (a red 80, if memory serves) up a ski flying hill.
actually there were two of them
a red audi 100 from 1986 you can see here: https://youtu.be/b6Vk53jOONo
and a silver audi a6 quattro here: https://youtu.be/25u80sQkkkM
One of the best auto commercials I have ever seen is from Cadillac, for the 2015 Escalade.
https://vimeo[dot]com/164931325
The fact GM produced this ballsy commercial proves that they totally understand the appeal of Cadillac and the Escalade.
Another one was a poster, but it was for the Chevy Tahoe, and it said something to the effect of “From the town house to the lake house.” You know like Lake Tahoe? Equating off road capability with wealth? They get it so so much, why can’t they apply this to their cars? All we get is degrating “wow had no clue this was a piece o crap Chevy/Buick” and little kids with tablets hawking wifi, like the prospect of kids climbing in my new vehicle is going to get money out of my wallet.
Chrysler was on fire in about 2012, something like “Chargers are for manly men” etc, I remember one a tongue in cheek one for the Caravan R/T with the orange seats, but no, now we get Sergio embarrassing my favorite auto company by going around begging for a bailout he doesn’t need. Ugh, why is Ford the only American company who has it together?
I loved the Challenger ad with a very stern George Washington behind the wheel speeding towards the British Redcoat battle line.
I love Infiniti’s “When Did It Start for You?” ads, which were both print and TV. Very evocative.
“Ever wonder what car the snowplow driver drives to work?” The VW TV spot that asks this question is my all-time favorite commercial. Also, more brilliance for VW from Doyle Dane Bernbach.
“There are leaders and there are followers. Life is really simple isn’t it”
https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2922/33685201375_70d50eaf6a_o.jpg
My three choices would be the Chevy “Like a Rock” ads from the ’90s (I grew up toward the end of it, but I do still remember seeing them on TV relatively often), and the Subaru ads with Paul Hogan, and more recently the golden retriever family. Who can argue with dogs?
I think an earlier Chevy add was “Hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet” indicating all things American.
“Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet..” Thanks for the memory trip!
In the mid-’70s, it was translated into Aussie as: “Football, meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars!”
(Apparently GM nixed the British version: “Rugby, jellied eel, yellow teeth and Vauxhall cars!”)
The 1984 Volkswagen GTI….kleiner GTI, to the tune of little GTO
I always liked “Some Range Rover Owners still check their own oil”
http://www.roverhaul.com/g3t/var/resizes/ads/rangerover-p38a/p38aads/Some_Range_Rover_owners_still_check_their_own_oil.jpg?m=1351466833
And “Sometimes, you have to get out and push a Range Rover”
http://www.roverhaul.com/g3t/var/resizes/ads/rrcads/rrc-printads/Sometimes_you_have_to_get_out_and_push_a_Range_Rover.jpg?m=1351466813
Nissan 300ZX ad with the Barbie dolls, to the tune of You Really Got Me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8QKK5IDSXE
I’m probably the only person who thinks this, but I kind of like the “Don’t be that guy” commercials for the Pacifica. To me, they are successful because:
1) They highlight differentiating features explicitly
2) They directly compare to / call out competing models – and include crossovers in the competition
3) They’re slightly tongue-in-cheek but not ridiculous like the embarrassing Toyota “Swagger Wagon” campaign
4) I like the song they use in them.
First one that springs to mind for me is this classic from my childhood.
Remy Julienne and the Fiat 124
how about the Asuna ads in the early 90’s GM launching their new car line in Canada, very mysterious commercials right up until the cars launched, ads didnt really tell you anything except asuna at the end, had me wondering until they finally came out and were just rebadged imports, believe the car line only lasted a year or two
Ahhh, Asuna. I worked parts/service in a Pontiac store at the time. What a pain in ass GMs badge/name engineering. Customers literally had no clue what they were driving and when you’d ask, they’d flip-out. The inside joke was, “Asuna GM gets their sh*t together, we might sell some cars.”
BMW Films starring Clive Owen
2005 Ford Mustang GT with Steve McQueen: https://youtu.be/UZzXHq7gKN8
2008 Ford Fusion Ice: https://youtu.be/1WMhkn43FQk
http://www.planethoustonamx.com/amc_ads/70_rebel_machine_ad.jpg
1970 AMC Rebel Machine:
“Incidentally, if you have delusions of entering the Daytona 500 with the Machine, or challenging people at random, the Machine is not that fast. You should know that. For instance, it is not as fast on the getaway as a 427 Corvette, or a Hemi, but it is faster on the getaway than a Volkswagen, a slow freight train, and your old man’s Cadillac.”
I mean, who wouldn’t want to buy one with that bit of marketing?!?
BMW films: the driver series.
way down from that: the (could have been Lexus RX or some other CUV) dodging the big clown trying to stomp on it.
It wasn’t a serious campaign, but Key & Peele did a very tongue-in-cheek skit called TeachingCenter, wherein there was an alternate universe in which teachers were paid like athletes and vice-versa. Anyway, it was sponsored by BMW, and had a very interesting mock-ad for the M6 Gran Coupe. You can actually watch it here.
Dodge/Plymouth – Rapid Transit
Lexus – Something wicked this way comes
VW – Pimp mien auto
NIssan – Dogs love trucks
Acura – Es dis ein Duetchens auto?
I’ve always had a soft spot for the marketing themes in BMW werbefilms of the 1980s and 1990s. Decadent, self-indulgent, hedonistic and representing technology as humanity’s messiah. American Psycho to the core.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLGwqOZujSE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvzEDXunoqU
These themes continued all the way through the 1990s. In the late 1990s, the started going pop culture, but the message was still clear in ads like “Corners of Your Mouth”.
Then BMW went full swagger and that was the beginning of the end.
I’m no Porsche fanatic, but I did like the “clean slate” advertisement from the early ’90s.
https://carmaglife77.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/968_clean.jpg
Cadillac radio ads voiced by Lauren Hutton. Implied: “Buy a Cadillac and you could have a woman like me sitting beside you. Or if you’re a woman, buy a Cadillac and you could be a woman like me.”
Actually, I would be OK listening to her read the phone book.
Most of the classics have been touched on here, I’m oing to go with a mroe recent one: Mazda’s driving matters.
As a new dad at the time (and S2000 owner), watching the protagonist go from his NA Miata to a 3, 6, CX-5 for the family, and then finally back to a new ND MX-5 spoke to me. To a certain extent it actually made me feel something.
on a pure advertising level, I think it was clever too as it showcased almost the full model range albeit over a period of the manufacturer’s recent history, in a way of saying “we have something for you no matter what stage you are in life,” while at the end showing he could always go back to the beginning where everything was just fun.
The radio versions of the Driving Matters ads are awful.
“In Germany, it competes with airplanes.” Come to think of it, Porsche’s gatefold glossy ads from the mid-80s, showing off everything from the 962 to the 935 Moby Dick to the 959 really resonated with me.
The one with the most impact is Toyota’s ads during the late seventies, which ended with the emphatic tag line, “Toyota, Quality!”
That simple message – our cars are very well built and will last a long time – still resonates today. Other car manufacturers would be wise to put out something similar (if it were even somewhat believable).
One of my favorite commercials of any kind was the Nissan ad where GI Joe in the 300ZX steals Barbie from Ken – love it!
“Have You Driven A Ford… Lately?” is probably my favorite… I became a Ford fan in high school around the time the original Taurus was ending production in 2006 and watching the old ads inspired me to create a series of ‘updated’ ads on my computer and upload them to a (very early) YouTube. To this day I still think of pursuing a career in automotive marketing…
https://youtu.be/OYVxvn0l4XE
Since previous comments have included fake ads, I nominate Firesign Theater’s Ralph Sportsport Motors “We’ll sit on your face to make you a better deal”.
I don’t know about favorite, but in terms of memorable, there was a commercial that showed the grille of a black Cadillac, then the camera zoomed out and there were handles on the sides of the car with people walking on either side of it, suggesting the Caddy was a coffin and strongly implying that you only bought a Cadillac if you were old and buying your last car.
I only ever saw it once, and I don’t recall who the ad was actually for, but like the 1984 Mac ad, I still remember the imagery.