Time to unpimp zee auto.

So why is this commercial so effective?

"Unpimp my ride: VW Golf GTI Ad" on Google Video

Any decent advertising must serve two masters: It must convey the product that is being promoted, and it must be creative. Sure, you can get a product across without being creative, but then you will have only added to the pile of bad advertising polluting the Earth. These ads for the Volkswagen GTI stand out for a couple of reasons - the most immediate one being that they are funny. This is mostly thanks to the brilliance of character actor Peter Stormare. His accent and over-stylized movement choices just make this piece... odd. You don't walk past the television without at least looking at this to see what is going on. Then there is the stunt, in this case flicking the car to its death. If this were covered with several shots from several angles, all of them close-up, the camera language would serve to say, "Hey! Look at this! It is really important that you see this!" When really, a director only commits that kind of coverage to a stunt because he doesn't want all the money spent on it to go to waste. When a camera stunt like this is kept in the background, we are not used to it, and as such it becomes even more bizarre. Finally, the mention of the product is kept out of it until the end - when someone speaking without accent gives us the plug. When following something that stands out from other commercials so well, one almost thanks Volkswagen for the entertainment. And certainly, they remember the name, "Volkswagen." If this level of sensitivity was applied to all advertising, certainly it would not be as hated as it often is. There are schools of thought that bad advertising can be more effective than entertaining advertising, and there is validity to that. Still, it is a far greater kindness to an advertiser as well as an audience to benefit both. Either through something as complex as an entertaining television spot, or as simply as providing useful content on a web page, value-focused advertising can sell a product and improve the world. A little.

About the Author: Eric Reid

I am the Social Media Services Manager for Off Madison Ave. I've been with the company since 2006, when I was hired to do SEO, and link building in particular. When social networking sites started cropping up, at first I started using them to create backlinks - but they weren't the best for that, given all of the "nofollow" attributes. However, I did see the potential for all of the direct referral traffic they represent. Since then I've been actively pursuing both tactics for clients: Links that can help them for search, and social postings that get them involved in the conversation. It's about the coolest job you could ever get. ;)

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