Auto Advertising Taken to the Next Level

Since the automobile was invented, marketers and salesmen have tried and tried to come up with innovative ways to promote and sell their product. But since those days, now over 100 years ago, car ads in the newspaper or on TV are a given. Rarely does some kind of advertising come along that is truly unique...until now. We've dug up a couple examples of the most outrageous advertising we have ever seen or heard.

SMART, the little company that has been struggling along over in faraway Europe has finally decided to take on the U.S. with
their microcars. The question is, is the U.S. ready for them? We have always liked things big...cars, houses, malls, you name it. And many people are skeptical about whether people in the U.S. will want to drive a car that is a third the size of a Suburban on city and suburban streets filled with them. People have grown accustomed to the myth that driving their urban assault vehicles will keep them safe, when that is so obviously not the truth. SMART hopes to change people's attitude about small cars (that they're just for the less fortunate). And they've started off by advertising their new car in a sandbox...yes its true...childs play you may say but it sure is eye catching. As a promotion for their second generation ForTwo, SMART has a scale version of the new car rendered in sand sculpture form. When Daimler Chrysler was looking to get talk circulating about the new car, they found Pavel Zasanyok, world champion sand sculptor, to create a model of the new SMART FourTwo with only the help of a 1:18 scale model of the car. While the new car won't be due for another year or so, this gave viewers a great sneak peak at what will be coming to the U.S. in the near future.

VW, the quirky company from faraway Germany has always tried to be the "people's car". That definition has changed over
the years with VW now offering the Phaeton, which at $65,000 as a base price, and a top end at nearly $100,000, has been shunned by most VW faithful. And now, VW has come up with another way to draw people into its showrooms. While music is very important to most people when they go on a drive, VW has taken this a little further than most by offering, for a limited time, a brand new custom guitar with the purchase of new select VW models. Not only does the guitar come standard with the requisite VW logos and pick guards matching the color of your car, but so does a hookup allowing the instrument to be played through the vehicle's stereo system. You could have Eddie Vetter playing on the radio and you bud Eddie Smith playing in the back seat. While to many mature buyers, this just looks like a gimmick. But for those of us a little younger at heart, this makes us cooler than we ever dreamed.