There’s a fun new Volkswagen ad that shows a kid repeatedly hitting an SUV-shaped piñata at a birthday party, but he’s unable to break it. Then, the piñata is twirled slightly by the wind, and we see the VW logo on the nose. The intent is obviously to show how tough this car is. It’s a really cute ad, but there is another explanation possible for why the kids couldn’t break the piñata: they’re too weak from sitting around, watching TV and eating junk food all day. Maybe putting phys. ed. back in school would help.
There is an unfortunate subliminal suggestion in this spot, however. I’m sure it’s unintentional, but the SUV piñata is in a rainbow pattern of horizontal stripes, and as such it looks rather like the flag of the gay community. That would be fine in itself, but the problem is that with the kid repeatedly hitting it with a stick (and then his dad hitting it), it looks as if it’s some kind of veiled attempt at anti-gay conservative hate-mongering. I’m sure it’s purely coincidental. Unless VW is secretly trying to court the gay-hating fundamentalist bible-thumper market. Then it would be an interesting new twist on demographic-specific subliminal targeting of a more generalized market, and if it worked, everyone might start using it soon to covertly court generally reviled, extremist segments of the populace. I’ll bet that’s the future of advertising!
Surely no company wants to associate themselves with hate-mongers, racists, etc. (that could be bad for business), but we all know they’d be happy to sell them stuff anyway, right? I mean, their money is worth the same as ours, isn’t it? So maybe this VW ad really is an attempt at subliminal hate group-targeted advertising after all. If they found through research that this ad led to a significant increase in sales to anti-gay activists, perhaps they could try to tap into other hate groups, either subliminally or directly. After all, the Volkswagen company was founded by Adolf Hitler,* and they hardly ever try to use that as a selling-point. Hitler is perhaps one of the most well-known people in all of history, and they’re just letting this association go to waste! Think of all the cars they could sell to neo-nazis and white-supremacist groups if they played up that angle! Hell, I’ll bet they could easily become famous for being the #1 car of hate groups and racists worldwide if they wanted to. I wonder why they’re not doing it.
You know what else they could do for VW? They could try to target the serial killer demographic by playing up the fact that Ted Bundy drove a VW Beetle. He’s actually famous for driving a VW Beetle, and in all the made-for-TV movies about Bundy, they always make a point of showing him driving one. They could do a whole ad campaign touting this fact, or even sponsor a new made-for-TV movie about Ted Bundy to stress the connection. I can hear the announcer now, saying: “The Ted Bundy Story, sponsored by Volkswagen. He couldn’t have done it without his VW Beetle! Girls just can’t resist it’s sporty charm! By Volkswagen: the car company founded by Adolf Hitler!” Seriously, with the serial killer fascination mania we’ve got going on in this country, I’m surprised they haven’t done it yet!
* Don’t believe me? Check it out in the “History” section of the Wikipedia page:
Here’s the ad:
