Volkswagen's Super Bowl Ad

An article on Ohmidog.com says that Volkswagen's Super Bowl ad this year will once again have a Star Wars theme. This article includes a teaser video of the ad released by the company featuring dogs barking "The Imperial March" from the movie soundtrack. However, apparently the ad that will show during the actual Super Bowl does not actually contain this type of video footage--instead, it will have dogs dressed as various characters from Star Wars still barking out "The Imperial March." The author notes, as I thought to myself while reading, why tease us with an ad that is nothing like the one that will be shown?


The way I look at this is that if VW can afford it, why not go ahead and release something that will begin circulating and make people aware that they are buying ad space for the Super Bowl again this year. For me, watching the Super Bowl is just as much about the commercials as it is for the game; however, as an audience we are overloaded that day with numerous highly invested and produced commercials, each competing with the next to be the most humorous or memorable. Volkswagen is surging ahead in my mind as a company that I will be looking out for, having already heard the description of the ad, and I am interested to see the final concept.


Honestly it's not a concept I am extremely excited about- I don't know that using dogs to bark out a theme song for advertising the revamped 2012 Beetle is an idea that says a lot about the brand identity.While I am a dog lover, I don't particularly enjoy listening to dogs bark, even if they do create a song; I only watched to the end to see the tagline "Back. And better than ever." I like the line, and I think it's one of the only parts of the ad that says anything about the product or company, but if it weren't for my interest in the article and the commercial, I probably wouldn't have watched until the end.


I remember thinking last year's commercial was incredibly well thought out, with a young boy dressed up as Darth Vader attempting and failing to use the Force until his father pulls in in his Volkswagen and uses his keys to turn the car on remotely, humoring his son and his imagination. The ad takes us through various scenes and tells us about the target consumer's life, family, job, etc. It is easily relateable and endearing, something that I am not getting from this year's concept. I guess I'll wait and see what my peers and I think of the actual ad once the Super Bowl airs, but right now, I'm not seeing a successful execution of the idea of, as the Ohmidog article says, "The only thing that trumps sex is a cute animal."