Over the past few years, I’ve tended to turn away from the telly if there’s been an advertisement for a new car.
Quite simply, they’ve generally been horrible ‘car swishes along coastal road while bloke or woman grimaces, trying to appear as if their new purchase has transformed their existence’ efforts.
And don’t even get me started on the whole ‘Joy is…’ scenario employed by BMW.
However, things seem to have taken a turn for the better recently, and it has coincided with a realisation from several manufacturers that heritage isn’t a bad thing and may actually help shift a few moderns along the way.
Audi kicked things off a few months ago with its ad for the new A5.
Now, I have very little interest in the A5, but the fact that the bulk of the ad is made up of Paul Jaray’s teardrop prototype feeling sorry for itself as the ‘ugly duckling’, means that my attention remains directed at the screen for at least the first 40 seconds of the one minute ad. Until the A5 makes an entrance!
Land-Rover’s latest tv effort also made me sit up and take notice.
The ‘Above & Beyond’ advert kicks off with 20 seconds of ‘heritage’ footage – several Series Is are seen doing their thing – including scenes from the famous Oxford and Cambridge Far Eastern Expedition in 1955 – before a three-door Range Rover is propelled up the side of a mountain somewhere.
Obviously the ad then morphs into a commercial for the new range of Evoques, Discoverys etc, but I can almost forgive that necessity after such a good start.
