Human Opinions: Volkswagen Luv Bug

Watch the ad above!

Volkswagen isn’t a stranger to making commercials that get noticed. Do you remember Vokswagen’s 2011 Super Bowl XLV commercial with a little boy dressed as Darth Vader attempting to use the force on his parent’s VW Passat? How about the 2016 commercial with laughing horses, promoting their parking assist features on the VW Tiguan?

Volkswagen has a knack for developing timely commercials with just enough cute to make some noise in a crowded marketplace. And that’s saying something, considering most car commercials are filled with narration that try to hit you over the head with every feature the car has to offer. Volkswagen doesn’t make those mistakes. Are you craving the smartphone pairing intricacies of the Volkswagen Golf? Do you need to know more about the memory seats in the Touareg? They reserve these feature rich, spec-filled videos for their YouTube channel. They get it, and that’s the beauty of their strategy. They understand the need to showcase the car’s personality in the premium primetime ads because that’s where you need to make an impact – and impact doesn’t mean cluttering your commercials and overwhelming your audience.

Enter the new Volkswagen Atlas “Luv Bug” commercial – an all-new ad featuring their 7-passenger SUV. The ad follows a couple as they move through life together, focusing primarily on their child-rearing years. At the center of each milestone are their Volkswagen vehicles, seemingly where they do all their conceiving. Of course, adding another branch on the family tree is accompanied by steamy windows and a bouncing car. It’s an interesting concept and one that I’m sure some viewers will find funny and some viewers will find offensive.

But what were the minds behind this ad thinking? It’s clearly treading into territory that is borderline inappropriate for a brand of this magnitude – at least in the United States. We all know American advertising is far more inhibited than the rest of the world. Is this something that U.S. consumers are okay with today?

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