Remember the movie Alien? Or was it Aliens? I can never remember which was the first one.
Doesn’t really matter…
You will surely remember this classically-grotesque scene:
Now, you tell me, other than the blood, guts and screaming, what is the difference between this scene and these two commercials for Cars.com?
What is truly amazing to me is the fact that, well there are a quite a few things that are amazing to me about these Cars.com spots:
1. Someone in some ad agency conceived of this idea/concept and someone else – probably an executive creative director and others, saw the concept and green lighted it to send to the client.
2. Someone, or a group of people, at Cars.com saw the concept and green lighted it for production.
3. The first of the two spots above actually ran during this year’s Super Bowl. So someone at Cars.com green lighted the agency to spend millions of dollars to air this commercial AFTER green lighting how much money to actually create and produce it.
Can someone point me to the nearest wall so I may bangeth my headeth against it… over and over and over.
Of course Cars.com is hardly the first and unfortunately will not be the last brand/advertiser to utilize the “Alien” advertising method.
Think about it… what other examples do you know of where a brand/advertiser used this method?
And what do you think of it?
Did you like these spots for Cars.com?
If so, what did you like about it?
Named one of the Top 100 Influencers In Social Media (#41) by Social Technology Review, Steve Olenski is a freelance copywriter/blogger/brand strategist currently looking for full-time work. He has worked on some of the biggest brands in the world and has over 20 years experience in advertising and marketing. He lives in Philly and can be reached via email, Twitter, LinkedIn or his website.
