Accidents are a Bad Idea

I think, in general, we can mostly agree on this. Accidents are a bad idea.

So how about this advertising campaign I’ve been seeing from Volkswagen. These commercials start out with a multi-racial assortment of people chatting in a car, being all cute or funny, and then - you see it develop - a car pulls out of nowhere and a startling car wreck happens before your eyes. The next image is of the passengers standing outside the car wreckage - shaken, but not visibly injured.

I own a ’97 Jetta Trek. I love it. I’m shopping for a new car to replace my other car, a 22-year-old Japanese import, and was thinking about another Jetta. But these commercials make me think twice about it. Obviously, VW’s goal is to demonstrate how safe their car is, what with the commercial’s slogan being “Safe Happens”. But I’ve never been a fan of auto makers showing their cars getting demolished in commercials, even in crash testing. I like the Porche one where their engineers can’t bear to watch their masterpieces get crash tested. Or even the passengers who were saved by an air bag. It was emotional and memorable, but in a way that bothered me less (maybe, because ostensibly they weren’t actors). But showing real world wrecks, simulated or not, is different.

Here's what VW has to say in a USA Today article today: "There are mixed reviews but no matter what, the ads make you think that you can be driving along and you can't control what's happening," says Karen Marderosian, director of marketing for Volkswagen of America.

Talk about the safety rating. Let Consumer Reports give its ranking. Go ahead show me the safety features, but show me them in a sanitized form where I could never possibly believe that I will ever actually need them. I want to know I’m safe, but I don’t want to think about the situations in which I might actually need that side curtain airbag to keep my head from shattering the side window.

Here’s a test: come up with some commercials that show airbags deploy in a sudden and extreme yet comical series of situations. Slogan: “Always there” or “Just in case”.