VW 'Safe' Spots - and a rant.

Props to admonkey Mack at adverb. Might have missed this otherwise. At first, I thought he was referring to their VW ‘Safe’ website which showed a test crash scene. Ok, it was pretty cool. However, I didn’t realize he meant the spot on TV which I just saw last night.

To quote Mack: holyfuckingshit.

After downloading and watching them, I have a few nitpicks. It’s going to really come off like I hate them – I don’t. I loved them. All I’m saying is that it’s the weekend, it’s my blog, and I’ve spent the week laying down guest host PR smack over at Media Orchard. I need to vent with a more in-depth look at these, rather than my usual “I like them – I don’t like them” posts.

SEMI-SPOILER ALERT: First off, if you haven’t yet, see the spots before reading on. (Click here or on the image first before reading on.) There are two spots in the series: ‘Like’ and ‘Movie,’ and both show violent footage. (Via links at putfile.com. and adage.com.)

Nit #1: The set-up. Perfect for Movie, not so for Life though. In Movie you are not ready for what happens since the conversation in the car is everyday stuff. In Life, it is as well, but the topic being discussed is about the very thing that they will unknowingly experience soon enough. The spot tipped its hand by doing that. It felt a little predictable to have someone say one thing, and then, that scenario just happens to present itself?

#2: Payoff line at the end. Didn’t need it. The shock of the accident was enough. Putting the emphasis on that takes focus off the shock of what happened two secs prior and undermines the safety message. Unintentional perhaps, but that resulting effect smacks of trying to be cute. It’s like Beavis and Butthead came on and said “Shit! heh, heh. He said shit!” Are we to think hey awesome! They almost swore on TV! Edited like that, I question whether this spot is about swearing or safety.

#3: The placement of the spot. I saw it while watching FX’s Thief. Side rant here, but, if you haven’t yet watched FX’s lineup, it may be the best on TV with The Shield, Thief and Rescue Me. There, I said it. (Although Larry Sanders and The Office (U.K.) version are the two best shows ever made. Ever.)

So in Thief, there was a key scene in an episode involving the exact scenario found in the Movie spot, down to the shot angle and editing. I hope this was accidental on CP+B’s part. Otherwise, we now have ad agencies ripping content from “Today’s Headlines!” and from TV shows. That’s the crap Law & Order does. Having already seen that in the show, the shock of the VW spot was lessoned, and I felt a little ripped off.

#4: Editing. The post also jumped too quickly to post-accident with everyone standing around seemingly unharmed. A by-product of today’s live-action cartoon violence culture where nobody ever really gets hurt when they jump 30 feet from a building. Or perhaps when they hit a boulder in a Capitol One spot or an angel watching a jogger get hit by a dumptruck. Please.

Also, why aren’t these spots available on VW’s Safe site? (VW corporate archive has only older stuff.)

Like I said though, I loved them. Which leads to my final nit relating to viral work or spots like these that eventually end up on social sites:

#5 Proper Credit. The image above has a CP+B sign-off. That’s what it should have at least. Instead, you’ll see an Ad Age logo on it when you look at the real clip in that link. And because of that, this one is for Ad Age, YouTube or anyone else ‘branding’ a viral or video with their logo:

When you spend your life developing spots like these or any other creative, when you spend so much time at an agency that you’re working until 6:00 pm the next night, or you’re on location for days on end filming, forgoing any semblance of a family or social life, putting up with annoying clients and killing yourself to meet a deadline and put the best work out there you can, then you can put your fucking logo on it.

Until then? Credit the agency that did the work with their logo or name, not yours. (Yes it’s an unwritten rule that agencies never brand their work openly, although that barrier will be broken by someone soon.) In this case though, when you circulate someone else’s work without the context of the article it came, the identity of the agency gets lost.

So why not do it? You sure got increased traffic from carrying it. My Pledge of Quality to the now 17 people reading this: you won’t see a MTLB logo on someone else’s stuff I blog about. (And if you ever do, it will be really small.)

The other thing that these spots do is raise awareness of accident scenarios that can happen in real life. Over at Ernie Schenck’s blog, there was a column a while back on some controversial PSA work out of New Zealand. It got everyone nuts because of the graphic nature of the work.

(When I asked the creative responsible for it if he may have gone too far in scaring viewers beyond the target audience, he felt shock value was more important to wake people up, regardless of who may have seen it, including the kids it was supposed to protect.)

In this case with VW, I think CP+B did a good job walking the line between shock value and safety awareness – although I doubt legal would have let them get any more violent than they did. Even though the CSI-saturated American public is not quite ready yet, they’re getting a little better at accepting spots like these.

Tags: advertising, brands, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, VW