Well, Super Bowl XLIII has come and gone, and with it another batch of the filet mignon of commercials. Usually there’s a good selection of automotive ads during the game, and this year had its fair share – with three notable exceptions.
Yes, during the climactic hours of the most American of holidays (and yes, Superbowl Sunday counts as a holiday – have you ever seen how empty the roads are between 6 and 9 p.m.?), there were zero commercials touting the wares of Ford, Chrysler or General Motors. Apparently they decided blowing tens of millions of bucks on a couple 30-second installments of tube time after begging for billions of dollars in taxpayer cash would make them look a teeensy bit hypocritical.
So instead, we were treated to a mere five ads from foreign manufacturers. There were a few other commercials featuring automotive products – Bridgestone, Cars.com, and Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen among them – but less than half a dozen commercials by car makers themselves, coming from three automakers – Audi, Hyundai, and Toyota. Sad.
But enough of that – who was the big winner in the best car ad competition? Well, after reviewing the evidence from the booth, we here at CCO put it to a vote, and the results were unanimous.
The Winner: “The Chase,” for Audi
(Thanks to eGMCarTech for the video.)
You could have just had thirty seconds of Jason Statham hauling ass in an Audi and it would have been awesome. After all, that’s basically the premise behind the last two installments of The Transporter, and those two have raked in $74 million at the box office. (Audi prefers you forget about the BMW 735i he drove in the first one.) But showing him stealing four cars, paying quiet homage to The French Connection and “Miami Vice,” and managing to subtly piss on your competition is a masterpiece.
The Other Winners: BMW and Lexus. Because if two of the three manufacturers who run Superbowl ads mention your cars, you just saved yourself a few million dollars. Bad press is better than no press.
If you missed any of the ads, Hulu has a complete listing on their site. You can find it here.
1 Comment
03/05/2009 at 6:58 pm
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