The Colt campaign that we reported about in May Strawberryfrog drives Colt under water. is now driving us barking mad all over Europe. Posters are everywhere and the commercial with a woman driving under water flirting with some sub marine men is on all channels all the time.
Had it been above ground and a truck driver the Mitsubishi lady might have been more inclined to react the same way Thelma and Lois does, but under water she seems thrilled to be ogled at from above as she steers her little car down the banks. How odd. To really make sure the punters see this campaign, Mitsubishi is buying the cover of Metro - in seven different countries.
The extreme media buy campaign begins today, a Metro reader will be greeted by an extra cover around the paper, and the driving adventure continues on the inside pages where the Colt carries on driving at the bottom. The seven Metro countries are Sweden, France, Spain, The Netherlands, Denmark, Italy and of course, the UK.
Metro has been chosen for this campaign since it's truly pan-european and read by the target market 18-35 year old women. Hang on, that means I'm the target - funny, I don't read metro. ;)
This reminds me of something Dave Trott once said about an equally media-rich campaign. "I don't have a good idea so give me thirty million bucks." The sales will tell us if this works, but speaking as a girl in the target market - that commercial is not talking to me. Shouldn't the message be more important than the media buy? Go ahead, call me old fashioned. I'll wait.
The height of irony perhaps, but Metro is usually only found in the subway, the underground, le metro, tunnelbana - the readers use public transportation rather than drive their own cars. I wouldn't call that an ideal place to advertise a car, since their public transportation choice may very well be a lifestyle by choice.
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Now that is a rather good point - but somewhere Metro must have been able to say X percent of our readers have cars/are in the market for cars.... I hope, else media-buying is dead.
What really happens in the commercial? In the earlier post someone commented that they were rather disturbed by it..?
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Permalink... A cute young woman is taking her little Colt for a spin under water.. Tooot Toot... And then some men in a big white submarine with windows see her, they all point and look, she looks up through her sunroof and signals the men in the sub to Honk at her with a classic "Truckhorn pull". They do a "honk honk" as she drives around in the horizon.. eh.. underwater horizon.
Everything is quite light blue, white sub, a fashionable futuristic fantasy, and with a techno-ish soundtrack to it. But as you can see it's the usual girl-turns-heads story, just placed under water.
I don't know what kind of funny cookies they must have fed the focus groups to have a women actually want to be honked at by a truck..sorry, subdriver. It's the highway version of a wolf-whisteling construction workers, an unfortunately sometimes true and totally disgusting stereotype that no woman enjoys. At least none of the girls I know but I tend to hang out with sane people.
No dis to commenter in the older post, but being reminded about your mothers death in a reservoir by this happy-go-lucky underwater scenario is obviously a very personal connection that only that person can make. Everyone is alive and happy in this ad after all, as if the Colt was some kind of fantastic version of an Amphibicar - a subphicar perhaps? Actually, I'm in the market for one of those but... The Colt can't do that. I might have to settle for a Gibbs aquada.
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PermalinkFess up, you are more annoyed that the Colt can't drive under water that you are about the honking-scene.
That Gibbs is quite nice -- !!
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Permalinkyep yep, so very true... But I think it's the windows on the submarine that really bug me. ;)
I've been hunting for a classic Amphibicar for years, but I think I might just get that Gibbs instead. It is cool.
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