Yet I again I find myself blogging on an auto manufacturer that is on top of its game in terms of its marketing efforts. This time, Volkswagen is the company of the hour. They have recently created a Web site that definitely falls within the scope of effective advertainment. Golf Auditions is a clever little flash site that successfully combines humor and perhaps the oldest sales technique of all time: product demonstration.
The site opens to 7 people sitting in chairs, under the premise that they are waiting for auditions to see if they might be selected as the new salesperson/spokesperson for the Volkswagen Golf. Each individual represents a different car model, or a specific feature that adheres to all of the Golf models, and the talent on the site is hired to sarcastically, and blatantly represent their own Golf model, based on the people’s physical characteristics, as well as their overall mannerisms and idiosyncrasies.
Volkswagen makes some pretty bold moves with this campaign, namely through some of the more obvious physical traits of several of the characters that are supposed to represent a few different models. Perhaps the two most attention-grabbing characters are the naked hippie and the cross-dresser, who represent the environmental features of all of the Golfs, and the Cross-Golf, respectively.
On the site, the idea is to click on each of the different people who are auditioning, and they will then give you a run-through of their sales pitches / product overviews for their Golf models. Each video is short enough, and funny enough to retain the viewers’ attention, and they are all worth watching if you want to get a chuckle or two. The short videos vary in terms of the amount of actual product demonstration that they go into, but at the very least, each one demonstrates the unique features of the different models, and highlights several major key product features that are (obviously) shown in a positive light.
Will the site itself, by virtue of its content, get people to want to buy the cars? Probably not, but that is not what it is trying to do, nor is that usually the main goal of advertainment in general. Instead, the site will certainly leave the viewer with a lasting impression of Volkswagen, at the very least, which is an effective promotional tactic in itself.
Kudos to Martina at Adverblog (again!) for bringing this site to my attention through her post Here.
No comments:
Post a Comment