Another posting about tv – this ones all about Suzuki cars’ newest marketing partnership. They have a long-standing sponsorship association with ITV Saturday night entertainment programmes or, put more simply, shows featuring the ubiquitous Ant & Dec. And to back it up they formed an advertising link up with the duo themselves showing them driving around in their cars meeting fans etc for use as break bumper ads around the lads’ shows. I always thought that was pretty lazy thinking. Why target the same audience twice? But all that changed when Ant only went and crashed his actual car (not a Suzuki) whilst pissed and his addictions became public knowledge. Hence a year out of the public eye recovering at the Priory, which kind of created an Ant-sized hole in the Suzuki partnership strategy.
Now the smart thinking at the car company must have gone something like this; why have an association with two likely lads when you could have a link with three incredibly talented, dynamic and charismatic fellahs? Unable to find them they went and did a deal with the three remaining blokes who make up Take That. Boom boom. I’m having a bit of fun of course. I know TT are incredibly popular with a certain audience – females aged 5-85 – and let’s face I imagine most of the buying decisions for Suzuki cars are 80% inspired by women. So a good marketing fit I suppose. Especially if they link up the association with its ITV Saturday night entertainment partnership which is very family focused.
Anyway my beef is not the link with Take That per se but how they’ve delivered the hook-up. In think there are 4 ads that they’ve produced with the Manc trio and they’re all incredibly cheesy. They’re all based on the lads coming across their fans in settings dictated by turning up in a car or cars. One is a florist who needs to get to her dance class with TT music as the background sound, another is a primary school teacher who is teaching her class to sing what just happens to be a Take That song. They’re all terribly contrived and perhaps more in celebration of the fellahs and their music rather than the cars if truth be told. In fact I didn’t really find out anything about the cars which is a bit strange really. Anyway the last one I saw is a real stinker; it shows the lads driving a trio of cars and Gary tell the other two ‘hey guys, today’s mission is to pick up some of our fans on the way to a TT concert whose bus has broken down’. It’s a proper corny and contrived set up. And it’s almost always Gazzer who speaks in the ads, despite the fact he has a droney Manc voice, because little Mark just sounds like a kid off Coronation St and Donald probably hasn’t learned to put sentences together yet. He does make funny faces though.
If you think I’m exaggerating have a look for yourselves and enjoy the subtlety, craftsmanship, clever dialogue and biting wit. And no doubt be so impressed you’ll want to go out and buy a new Vitara. Yeh….
pp
Pasta Paulie 