Thursday, August 10, 2006

Dr. Z: Awesome commercial or strange German Man?

The new ads by Diamler-Chrysler are, well, odd.

I get that they want you to convey that the German Engineering has bettered the American-made cars/trucks.... but is that really in line with the branding efforts of some of their lines? Dodge for example is very much about power and has a very rugged brand image (grab life by the horns) which doesn't really mix with the charming but uppity Mr. Z. Don't get me wrong. I think Dr. Z is a cool guy, especially since he is the chairman of the company. But no middle-america trailer trash is going to be woo-ed by the stuck-up German.

Even if you could convince someone that the German connection was a good idea and the commercials were different enough from v-dub, is that direction going to alienate the people that already buying your product. They have a commercial with a redneck director yelling at our dear friend Dr. Z hwo is messing up another line. It's just too forced. The only way this scene works is if you replace Dr. Z with Dr. I need another beer because I wrecked my truck, my dog died, and my wife left me.

Chrysler is too weak of a company to be having an identity crisis.

1 comment:

Colleen said...

my guess is that they wanted a swift kick in the ass for their marketing because they felt so weak. unfortunately companies like that, struggling to change a brand image in a relatively short amount of time, may often resort to over-wacky, "too creative" not enough strat ideas.

he is wacky though. and i bet they have pickup trucks dead dogs and cheating wives in Germany. They're very progressive these days.