Week 5 EOC

The super bowl is a time for many to join together with friends and family and be social rather than watching the football game itself. I know that many of the people I spoke with said that the commercials are the best part and many watch for just that reason. This year my favorite commercial was the ad created for Volkswagon. It was a kitchy ad, one that spoke to the companies roots and reminded us of a game that we played in our youth. When we were younger there was a game, the slug bug game, whenever a VW bug passed by on the road you ‘slugged’ the person sitting next to you and said the color of the bug that just drove by. VW expanded this idea in their commercial to every one of their product lines. There were people in everyday situations, jogging, riding the bus, walking to work, who were slugging their neighbors as a new VW Toureg or VW Jetta passed by, while still stating the color of the vehicle. VW I think has always had ingenious marketing strategies, this one being that it will remind us of our youth and a time of innocence and may persuade purchasers to go to their products that they remember from their youth. In the past though VW has also done well, with their 1960s Lemon ad they went above and beyond by showing a car that looked perfectly fine and saying that ‘we pluck the lemons, you get the plums.’ It is interesting because bugs at the time were being called lemons by those who were fond of American made vehicles. This ad from the super bowl I feel will become another one of these ‘lemon’ ads. One that shows that while VW has a commitment to excellence they are also willing to poke fun at their corporate image to make themselves more relatable to the general populous.