Not intending to upstage fellow SiriusXM POTUS contributor and ace ad guy Thom Mozloom, the real plays of this week were run on TV and on Super Bowl Sunday. Here’s a quick breakdown of the influence strategies behind some of the more memorable placements.
Relying on the novelty of a cross-bred toothy Doberman Pinscher with a tiny Chihuaua, carmaker Audi used the Peacock play to grab our eyeballs. Once the attention was gotten, the ad shifted strategies to a Screen of its invented Doberhuaua. Something to the effect that Audi’s aren’t cross-bred or the product of compromise…
This ad, which featured the singing of America the Beautiful in multiple languages, was high-fit for second-language supporters and high-friction for English-only hardliners. As with Audi, the same play pair was employed, but reversed insofar as the Screen came first (the heavy reference to a multiethnic America) and then the Peacock on the mixed-language verse itself. It was a play for a broader Coke-drinking audience and a dis of its homogenous base.
Actor Laurence Fishburne lip-syncing opera in the back seat of a Kia? Yep. This ad was more subtle for the underlying Challenge play — that nice rich white couples may dispense BMX conceites for Kia luxury. Like Coke, the plays were essentially the same, only reversed in their order. The operative strategy to boost a new high-end sedan is a Screen on elegance, and the supporting play is the Peacock for the off-beat storyboard. This ad was edgy, but still high-fit.
Microsoft has always strained to define itself as a technology leader. And that is surely the reason behind its uplifting “empowering” ad, a 60-second shoot that reminds us of what technology gives us — new legs, new eyes, new ears, etc. The play is yet another Screen on myriad human symbols, including hope, hardship and conquest. Is the featured technology by Microsoft? Mostly no, and that’s where the ad takes its liberties and why the Screen is a risk. But then isn’t that what advertising is all about…one giant Recast or Filter of reality?
“Make love, not war,” is the literal message of this artful spot. In that regard, the operative stratagem is a Fiat, the simple declarative pressing play. But that the narrator’s line is garnished with rich images of the Axis of Evil (i.e., from Middle Eastern deserts to North Korean military parades), betrays the other play at work: a Challenge to the bad guys. Like the Kia spot, this ad is more complex, and it relies on the mixture of the two stratagems for its power.
WeatherTech: You Can’t Do That
For my money — and I do mean money — the best Super Bowl ad was little-remembered. Weather Tech. It began with a simple Screen on patriotism via quick vignettes on what can’t happen in the good old US of A — manufacturing, the use of raw materials, the use of local labor, etc. I was listening under the crunch of my Doritos, but then they said what they did. They make floor mats for cars. Turns out I’d been looking online for floor mats for my truck and had been cowed by all the choices. So, $114 buck later, I was onto the next commercial and ready, finally, for the snowy streets of DC. What was Weather Tech’s play? Like the Axe tandem, it was a Fiat+Screen combination. A shameless, but very credible, claim on the made-in-America mantra, followed by simple facts of what it does.
Floor mats. They might be just the thing for my new Audi (or Kia), a drive down the road, Coke in hand, my Doberhuaua licking at the wind, an actor singing in the back seat, all while pondering the greatness of Microsoft.
Post by Alan Kelly