I am a product of the new millennium. I had my first cell ‘phone when I was 12-years-old, my first e-mail address when I was about 10/11-years-old, I had an electronic pet called a Tamagotchi and I can record live TV and skip through the ads.
As a result, I have no idea what the new tag lines ad slogans are for various products and when people ask, “have you seen the new (insert product here) ad?” My response is “what is an ad?”
Television advertisements simply aren’t what they used to be. I try to remember one from last week, but I can’t. It’s the old ones that have endured through the years. Here are some car-related ones for a trip down memory lane.
As a side, I’m not sure why so many VW ads are stuck in my memory.
Volkswagen commercial about the VW family:
Sasol glug-glug commercial:
Continental tyres commercial:
Castrol commercial:
Volkswagen Kombi commercial:
Volkswagen memories commercial:
Volkswagen goodbye Citi commercial:
There are two more advertisements that I would like to have shown here, but unfortunately, for various reasons, cannot. The one is a Mercedes-Benz ad that aired shortly after the company heard about how an Irish businessman drove off Chapmans Peak drive in Cape Town in 1988, landed at the bottom and emerged unscathed from the wreckage. In this ad, Mercedes-Benz claims that his good fortune is due to the fact that he was wearing his seatbelt and because he was driving a Mercedes-Benz.
Shortly after, BMW did its own take on this Merc ad and made a video of BMW driving on the same pass and beating the corner that the businessman drove off in the Merc ad. BMW’s pay off line: “Beat the Bends”.
I remember seeing this BMW advert. I was one of the lucky few because a week after it aired, it was banned from South African television (competitive advertising laws and all that) and BMW have also been able to keep it off the Internet. Personally, I think it was a really great marketing move from the Bavarian-based manufacturer. Even if it only saw a few days of airtime, it is still one of the best examples of competitive advertising and it’s still spoken about today.