Okay, just what exactly is going on with advertising lately?
First there's those Bill Gates/Seinfeld ads that were so confusing and stupid that Microsoft pulled them off the air after only airing two of them and switched immediately to a me-too-ism campaign trying to counter Apple's "I'm a Mac" ads by saying PCs are better because they're ubiquitous and can afford celebrity spokespeople. Or something.
And now there's Volkswagen. Hey, remember when VW ads were awesome? Remember that "Share the Joy" one with the guy going through the geeky features of his new car, like the windows that roll down when you lock the door from the outside, and his exasperated wife storming back inside? The infamous "chair" ad? The "Unpimp ze auto" ones? Fahrvergnügen? Yeah... well, this is what they're up to now:
With more of this tomfoolery here. What's hilariously sad about all this, of course, is that the Routan is just a rebadged Caravan, and hearing Brooke Shields talk about "German-tuned suspension" and "German engineering" without acknowledging the fact that it's about as German as "Das Big Mac" is an exercise in fending off depression over the thought of how many people are potentially in the market band that a) cares about "German engineering" and b) doesn't know that the Routan has so little of it.
VW and I had a torrid fling throughout the late 90s, when it was as close to an ideal make for me as possible. Then we parted ways. Perhaps it was inevitable, since it's so hard for two people to grow and mature in exactly the same directions. But now I don't even know them anymore.
I don't know whether there's some kind of pervasive numskullery washing across the advertising landscape (don't even get me started about those Twix ads that, perhaps out of sheer incomprehension by a second-string ad agency, ditched the "Twix lets you buy time in a sticky situation by filling your mouth with syllable-munging caramel" concept for "Twix actually lets you physically pause time while you think of an appropriate comeback"). But this is one trend I'd be happy to see reversed.