Well, our Mercedes-obsessed Santa Claus is back, and this time he's looking at a line of red Mercedes Benz cars and smiling, just like we might have expected from the last Mercedes Santa Claus commercial, where he's revealed to be a secret hoarder of red Mercedes Benzes. Oh, but in this spot, the line of red cars is getting onto a car carrier that's labelled: "Naughty". (And there's another line of white cars labelled: "Nice".)
So, are we to infer from this that Santa Claus is naughty? He drives to red ones too, so this must be what they're getting at here. Well, I never: insulting Santa Claus as being naughty? What jerks! Santa saved Frosty the Snowman last night on TV! And they still insinuate he's naughty? They're going to get a lump of coal in their stockings this year! (Or, for a practical joke, perhaps Santa Claus could make a reference to cars by pouring a barrel of crude oil down their chimney.)
Now, this is easy to fix. I mean, I understand that devils = red, angels = white idea, but I don't think it works in this ad campaign because they have already established that Santa Claus drives red ones himself. So how about making the "naughty" cars black with dark tinted windows? That would work better within this milieu, because naughty people aren't necessarily demonic, and most of the badass people I know drive black cars. And this would make plenty of sense, while not soiling Santa Claus's reputation by impugning his integrity through guilt-by-association with the red cars. See what I mean?
Here's the Santa-smearing spot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymNlGQkVrYY
