Chrysler & Eminem: Never Forget Where You Came From
As you’ve seen by my last few posts, I took a pretty good look at the Super Bowl ads this year. In my opinion, most fell short of the mark from past Super Bowls. There were a few that resonated with me for different reasons. Volkswagen with the previously mentioned ‘The Force‘ spot, as well as the introduction of the new VW Beetle – cute and well executed spots. I thought Planters did a great job with their stop motion spot entitled ‘Alejandro‘ for their almond line. I’m biased – it was done here in Portland by Laika/House. I always love local companies making good on the big stage.
Finally, the spot I thought evoked the most EMOTION in me was by Chrysler – ‘Imported From Detroit‘ (created by Wieden+Kennedy here in PDX). This is a city and a community that has been kicked in the head repeatedly as we’ve hit the economic downturn. As one of my co-workers stated, the spot connects and re-connects with almost every line. For someone that has never been to Detroit, nor really considered it a place I’d be interested in visiting, I had that opinion altered with the cinematography as Slim Shady navigated his Chrysler throughout the city. Someone else described the ad as an ode to the motor city, with a bit of product placement. That’s a spot on assessment. You’ll never see this aired again on broadcast TV in it’s original format – at 2 minutes long, it’s outside the boundaries of a normal 30 second commercial. It is getting plenty of run on YouTube however, with 4.5M views and counting. Well done Chrysler. Never forget where you came from.
Detroit! Couldn’t agree more that this stood out from the pack, and is tops for recall in my focus group of myself. 🙂 Also not afraid to admit that the Chevy/Glee spot stuck with me. Watched my first full episode of Glee following the game and was pretty darn impressed.
The Chrysler spot carries more weight if you’ve driven the streets of Detroit lately. The creative agency must have a Detroiter on staff … well done, especially with the allusion to Diego Rivera’s famous work at the DIA–a great cultural symbol of American autos.