Company - Volkswagen
Product - Automobile
Brand - Golf
Agency - DDB
The Advert: A man drives a Golf through the deserted early-morning streets of a city. Dogs bark, cops rub their eyes, shops are shut, stolen vans burn. As the advert runs, Richard Burton quotes from the BBC Radio version of 'Under Milk Wood' (edited from two seperate sections of text).
"And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now."
"Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, school-teacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot cocklewomen and the tidy wives."
"Only your eyes are unclosed to see the black and folded town fast, and slow, asleep."
Strapline. When was the last time you just went for a drive?
Actually, I can't remember. But I'm pretty sure it was before petrol hit a pound a litre. And I drive a gorgeous Jaguar.
Now, I recently hired a Golf. It was a nice enough car, as it should have been considering it was on a 2006 late plate, but it had one thing about that made me a bit despondent.
It was exactly the same car as my wife had five years ago, give or take a few body and interior tweaks, and the removal of an 1800cc automatic engine and the transplant of a manual petrol version.
Same disco interior red and violet dash lighting, same feel, same ride.
Hadn't really moved on as a product, and as much as I appreciated it's ride around town and it's ease at parking and it's frugal economy on the way up to the West End, I didn't really think much more of it after I handed it back to Avis.
And there's an awful lot of Golf's around these days, so we all know what they are, what they do, what they look like. We all know someone who has owned one, but doesn't have plans to buy one any more.
So what are VW saying here? What's their agenda? The message?
They are saying that their car is so good, you will get out of bed, probably still drunk as a monkey or as high as a sherpa, and get dressed, and drive around your town when it is quiet. And therefore, there's a good chance that you are a lonely person, maybe an insomniac, with no other relationship in your life save that that you have with your Golf. And that's a purely late-night love affair.
Now, if you are this sort of sociopathic introvert who can't gel or bond with a human enough to get them into bed and be happy to sleep next to them, entwined, bonded and at peace, then at least when you do open the garage door at 3.00am, you will not be doof-doofing it around the block to 50 Cent as those oiks with Scooby-Do's do.
Nah. You'll be listening to Dylan Thomas's ode to the boredom of life in a Welsh village named Llareggub. Hold that name up to a mirror, and you get the telling descriptor for not only what is going on in Thomas's fictional hamlet, but what is also going on in the creative minds of those DDB hacks who thought a good ambient track shot with generic footage of night-driving almost entirely plagiarised from Michael Mann's 'Heat' and 'Collateral' would be 'cool'.
Richard Burton, a brilliant actor and drunk, recorded his 'First Voice' track many, many years ago, but it's gravitas and emotion still holds today. Bird immediately looked up 'Under Milk Wood', and found it available for download.
She did not look up 'VW Golf'.
See. God knows we've seen night-time driving adverts before. And we've seen adverts with voice-over's from the best actors of many generations sell their asses for cars, whisky, credit cards...you name it.
But this is a fucking scandal.
Burton was a maniacal genius as an actor, and Thomas's work is still a text worthy of study into how to create atmosphere from setting the tempo of a piece of writing.
And now here it is, flogging over-priced German hatchbacks over the top of some twinkle-twinkle plunking muzak. probably lifted from a Japanese airport sushi bar.
This advert screams out
"Please acknowledge that the Golf is ubercool, even though it's been the staple vehicle for all leather elbow-padded history teachers who have taught for the last twenty years".
Once more, idiotic creatives get too wrapped up in their own emotions to bother to engage those who are the potential market.
"Consumers is just like us" scream the Agency, "we love this advert".
Many creatives would love this advert for it's visuals and for the voice-over, but the truth is is that the same people who would maybe buy a Golf are probably glued to Big Brother. or fretting about interest rate hikes. Or both.
In fact a Big Brother episode shot in an agency like DDB, where the cell-mates have to all come up with an advert for the Golf...now...there's a concept.
Finally, no-one wants to drive through a city at night. There are speed cameras, and drunks, and breathalysers and congestion charges. Driving through a city at night is crap, especially after midnight. The only people who think driving through a city at night is cool are video directors, and they only do it because they can't ever forget the opening shots of 'Taxi Driver'. If this had had steam rising from a subway vent, it would have had the entire set of night-time cliche's attached to it.
This is just lazy.
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