Volkswagen? You've let me down, son.

Volkswagen. Advertising legends. Since their 1960’s Lemon campaign they have been a dream client for any advertising agency because they’re witty, they’re daring and they’re creative. They’re legendary pay off lines include “It makes your house look bigger”, “How does the snowplow driver get to his snowplow?” and “It’s unusual to drive the car you were consumed in” They do not include “Have you seen him? Your Volkswagen has”

It’s not that this is a particularly bad campaign, and trust me when I say I feel like a pushy parent saying this, but I just expect better from them.  Volkswagen is just smarter than this, more creative than this. This is the sort of shoddy behaviour I would expect from Fiat, or a lesser brand, but Volkswagen- you know better than this, son.

The advert is for their side assist, some magic technology that can detect when someone’s riding in your blind spot. Interesting product that has a lot of cool angles you could take on it. Literally displaying the benefit is possibly one of the most boring ways to show it off, and that is exactly what they have done. Must admit: there is a bit of fun in trying to scope out the person in the picture, your mind does do a bit of work. But there is no awesome “aaah-hahahahaha” moment that your normally get from a Volkswagen ad. Just squinting eyes and “hmmm” with this one.

On first view I really enjoyed the art direction. Simple and a bit interesting considering the boring concept, also a black page will always stand out to me. Basically anything clean-cut stands out from the clutter, so they’ve drawn in the viewer- well done. The longer I stared at it the more familiar it seemed though, it got uncomfortable and frustrating, like looking at a face and knowing you know them. It took me some aggressive Googling to find this. Mwa-HA. Got you.

TVN did a very similar campaign that I later found online; they took iconic still shots from films and wedged a tiny slice of advert between them. When I first saw the Kill Bill advert I loved it (I definitely have a type- oops). Very similar concept with two completely different products, interesting, got me thinking.

A bit more of a search and these damn things are apparently quite common. Wowza, I guess it finally makes sense why I’m writing these things weekly: I have now saved myself the embarrassment of not knowing a cliché. Go Team! Learn something new every day.

Back to VW though, I strongly believe in their general awesomeness. I think they might’ve just gotten ever so slightly cocky and therefore let their standards slip a little. Hopefully it just means their next campaign will be mind-shatteringly crazy good.