So let’s kick this off with an ad that I love. Seriously, I love this spot for Land Rover because it is an automotive ad that actually tells a story. How often do you know a car ad because the second it starts, you want to dive for the remote to turn it off. Unless you are in the market for a new car, what do you care if Subaru is having a sale, or GM is offering Employee Pricing?
Well I sure don’t. Most car ads just include the normal sale info, a car driving along a windy road, or a snowy road, or across rocks, or (insert terrain here). Some might ask (and some do, check the comments on YouTube) what this ad has to do with selling a car. Well, it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the car. After all, most people know what a Land Rover looks like.
What does it tell? It tells a story about the brand. What is Land Rover about? In this ad, some guy who sounds a lot like Ewan McGregor tells us. And yes, this ad is a little too ‘filmy’. But it needs to be to stand out from the rest.
This spot doesn’t have to do with selling a car. Some of the best ads don’t. But it does tell us what the Land Rover brand is about, which gives us a REASON to buy Land Rover over, say, Toyota. You buy the Land Rover because you, too, want to go to “beyond”.
Land Rover ‘Go Beyond’ ad via YouTube
UPDATE: Jeep has inserted random terrain here. I’m actually not going to say I don’t like these, but they certainly don’t tell a story like Land Rover.UPDATE: Ford Endeavour 4X4 has made their own, extreme terrain ads. These are pretty, but when is it going to stop?
[...] A great example is the “Go Beyond” ad by Land Rover. I wrote an entire post on it here. I’m not much a numbers researcher, but I would love to know the effect these ads have had on [...]
[...] in their artistic quality and message. You start with incredible, thought-provoking stuff like the “Go Beyond” spot for Land Rover, to total push-type crap like Billy [...]
I wrote the music to this commercial