Clint Eastwood: Hitting hearts instead of faces.

While scrolling through blog posts on “Drew’s Marketing Minute”, I came across one regarding one of my favorite things in this world: Football.

The post was commenting two commercials that were featured in the 2013 Super Bowl Ads:

1) The Budweiser Spot – The Clydesdale’s: “Brotherhood”

2) The Jeep Spot: “Whole Again”

Drew McLellan commented on the fact that although both ads were tear jerkers and successfully made every viewer call their parents to say “I love you”, they were not effective in all the right ways.

The fact that neither commercial brought up any facts about the products themselves does not make the viewer any more inclined to purchase their product over another competitors. Yes, it is touching, but it is enough?

This post brought up another commercial to my mind, one which was also voted the best Superbowl Ad one year previous to these (2012).

Here is Chrysler’s commercial “Halftime in America”:

Chrysler was extremely effective in hitting several parts of the heart. To start, getting Clint Eastwood, arguably one of the most respected and loved American icons to narrate was clutch. Second, showing several middle class families across the country living day-to-day during economic uncertainty made an affective connection to the viewers. Finally, creating a bridge between the preparation needed to motivate a team to win the second half of a football game with the motivation to bring the great country of the United States of America back to the strong times was truly inspiring.

Although all these tactics were utilized perfectly, did the marketing sector of Chrysler really do their job? Aren’t the point of commercials to prove why your product is better than everyone else’s? What the commercial did for me was remind me that Chrysler’s are American-made vehicles. Although that is not a bad tactic to use, what makes these American-made cars better than ones made in Japan? If I’m a struggling American, I’m going to purchase a vehicle that  is reliable, has great MPG, and can be purchased at an affordable price. None of these are even mentioned in the commercial!

Although I salute Chrysler for making an inspirational commercial, if their goal was to increase the sales of their vehicles, they may need to stop “talking the talk and start walking” (if you will).

 

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