Funnier, Betterer, More Profitabler!

User-Car Seduction Beyond The Big Game

A long week has passed since Super Bowl Sunday assaulted our sensibilities with all manner of virtue and villainy for and against advertising.

If you read last week’s screed, I joked about Vroom.

I stood and applauded them for a commercial that delivers both mirth and message.


Then, 12 hours later I couldn’t recall what they do.

Well, now I remember. And you know why?

Frequency!

That combined with a potent message.

They’re running those commercials like crazy. There’s the spot from the big game, and now I’ve seen another.


The formula is brilliant in its simplicity.

They set up a relevant joke.

For instance, a guy is being held captive in the car dealership from hell.

The salesman looks like the vile antagonist from a Roger Corman B-movie.

He jokes that the customer can leave any time he wants (as he chortles and taps together the clamps from a pair of jumper cables that spark and sizzle).

Then, the scene flips 180 degrees.


The beleaguered car buyer is back home in the sunlight of his front yard with his wife.

He’s enjoying a beverage as Vroom delivers his newly purchased used car on the back of a flatbed.

CAR BUYER: “Wow, that was painless.”

ANNCR: “Never go to a dealership again. Go to Vroom dot com, buy a car, and we’ll deliver it, contact-free.”


The setup is funny, showing the dark side you don’t desire.

The payoff shows the alternative to the conflict as the easiest, best possible sunshiny day.

And that USP? So good.

“Never go to a dealership again.”

The Vroom tagline is almost invisible. It’s part of the logo.


“Get in.”

That’s good, too.

In funny advertising, there’s a often a disconnect.

There’s a vivid demonstration of the bad because the bad is funny.

There’s never an equally vivid illustration of the good.


Nothing makes you say, “Hey, I want that!”

Vroom does it right.

“The bad sucks. Ha! See how much more desirable we are? Phew!”

And that’s the key: you can see, richly, vibrantly, intensely in mere seconds, how much better the hero advertiser really is.

In a jam-packed, affecting and arousing 30 seconds, Vroom hits all the right emotional notes.


Vroom turns the key to start the engine on a psychologically charged buying process.

They make themselves desirable.

And they are buying frequency well beyond the Super Bowl.

For Vroom, the Big Game is just the beginning of the long game.

The naysayers love to tell you Super Bowl advertising is a waste of time and money.

Here's an advertiser who knows how to make it honey.
Cheers,

Blaine Parker
Your Lean, Mean Creative Director in
Park City
www.SlowBurnMarketing.com
www.CoupleCo.com
www.LessonsInLightning.com
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