Following In The Wrong Footsteps

For the Superbowl, General Motors came out with ad with a robot dreaming about throwing himself off a bridge because he gets fired from his job at GM. All in all the ad was very depressing with little spurts of humor. People were not happy about this ad and felt it was making fun of the idea of suicide. The advertisement was immediately pulled. Word got out about this ad being pulled and many people felt as if it was the right thing to do. Suicide is no laughing matter but it is an extreme way to get across the idea that their company, GM, is the best car company out there that people and/or robots, can't seem to live without.

It was just a matter of days when Volkswagen comes out with an advertisement about an actual person standing on the ledge of a tall building threatening to jump. A man in a VW drives by and yells up to the jumper (also the name of the advertisement) and tells him he bought his car and you can also buy two other models for under $17,000. After the comment the man decides to come down. According to Holly Saunders from the New York Post, five different mental health groups joined together to criticize this ad and demand it be pulled. They were respected and the ad was removed.

Two car companies coming out with similar commercials about suicide, in a matter of days, just seems bizarre. If one spot is being pulled, why did a different company try to see if theirs would work. All this talk about GM's commercial being pulled, you would think they would leave well enough alone. The commercial must have been worked on for a while and was probably is the midst of making it when the GM commercial was put on the air. VW definitely got wind of what happened to GM, so why try? It was probably to get the publicity through word of mouth and hopefully enough people saw the ad run once and were able to start spreading the news.

The more and more you think about it, buzz marketing is such a powerful concept. The decision made by Volkswagen to air a commercial that makes fun of the idea of mental health, knowing it will be pulled but still knowing you will get the publicity...is unreal. Whether they ran the commercial once or twenty times, it doesn't matter because we, the prospective consumers, are helping them get the advertising they wanted which was to inform us that we can buy three different VW models for under $17,000. Volkswagen may have made some people unhappy but in their eyes, this ad may still be a success.

VW "Jumper" Ad
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpUGukfZnzw

GM "Robot" Ad
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3NGN4t4hm4