Has Volkswagen taken the Star Wars theme too far? Or have they not taken it far enough?
On the one hand they have taken a good theme and it is getting them positive attention. Everyone loves the Star Wars and now everyone wants to see where VW will take this theme in the future. Yet they took it too far, or I should say for too long, in this commercial. 60 second commercials have their advantages but when it drags on, such as this one, to the point where the viewer is getting bored, the commercial is just too long.
Reduce the time from 60 to 30 seconds and this would have been golden. The “at-at” dog could have walked in around the 20 second mark and the viewer would still have enough time to realize that the song was from Star Wars. The phrase quality over quantity fits perfectly into this scenario and the overall focus of the ad would have been conveyed in a much more effective manner if it was shorter.
Beyond timing, the creative aspect is amazing. We have never seen dogs ‘sing’ a song before and the added fact that each dog represents a character from the 6 part series is seamless. We can easily tell that the darker, short dog is Chewbacca while the brown and white, small dog in the lower left is Padme. This only furthers the quality and relatablilty of this ad.
Wait a second, what does the concept of this ad have to do with cars? There is absolutely nothing that ties Star Wars to VW cars in this commercial. The flawless commercial last year with the young boy acting as Darth Vader had a great tie to cars but this one could have been a commercial for any company under the sun. The only part making this ad a Volkswagen ad is the couple seconds at the end when,”That’s the Power of German Engineering” is written on the screen under the symbol. What is the ‘power’ anyway? The action of having a couple of dogs in a room barking doesn’t speak to any definition of ‘power’.
I want to like this commercial. It has a lot going for it with the theme and the pure creativity but both of those aspects don’t relate back to the fact that VW is a car manufacturer. A viewer will be able to remember this commercial very well since they have never seen anything like it before but will they be able to remember that it was a VW ad? With all of this taken into consideration I will give this ad a 4 out of 10. Giving any lower wouldn’t respect the quality but any higher would ignore the excessive timestamp attached to it.
-Adam
