Cars

I assumed that like, say Instagram, the adverts that get served to me during commercial breaks on the ITV app are targeted. On Instagram I’m regularly shown promotional posts for bookshops, cat food and larch clad self-catering accommodation in the Western Isles of Scotland.

The ITV app doesn’t work so well. It accurately identifies me as not being immortal and regularly fires up ads for Pure Cremation. In contrast you’d think that with all my personal data floating around in the ether, the ITV algorithm would correctly categorise me as a non-car owner (10 years now) and not bother trying to promote cars to me. Not so, and barely a commercial break passes without an advert from a car manufacturer.

As far as I can see, most cars these days look pretty much the same, with little to distinguish, for example, a KIA from a Hyundai. The adverts follow a similar pattern too, the shiny metallic vehicles swooshing silently either through a desert or a forest landscape, or perilously near the edge of a cliff. Occasionally the camera cutting to focus on an interior feature of the car, a foldable armrest or an ashtray.

Despite not needing a car, or at least not needing a car 24/7 - a combination of walking and car clubs works for me - here are three of my favourite car adverts from this year.

Volkswagen

At the back of my mind I have that another manufacturer (Renault? Citroën?) has done this sort of thing before. No matter, if you have a history of iconic models - Beetle, Passat, Classic, Golf, Campervan - then use them and use their owners, “Without the Volks, there is no Wagen’. From creative agency adam&eveDDB and directed by Finn McGough  (he did this brilliant Northern Soul ad for Shredded Wheat about 10 years ago) this is lovely. To cap it all, soundtracked by Thank You For Being A Friend by the wonderful and very much missed Andrew Gold.

However, every time I see it, I can’t help remembering the lyrics that follow the song’s first chorus (unused in the advert): “If it's a car you lack / I'd surely buy you a Cadillac.”

Polestar

That this is an advert for a car is hinted at from the off as we see footage taken from within the car as it travels at speed along a road at night.  Any doubts in the viewer’s mind are dismissed after about 15 seconds when we see a car whizz by right to left.

An anonymous voice asks “Tell us what it was you saw?” To which we hear the response “It went by so fast, I didn’t know what it was. I’d never seen anything like it.” This is from the swooshing through the desert school of car adverts, but the vehicle isn’t moving so fast that you couldn’t identify it as a car, a car that looks like any other produced in the last 15 years.

Although the conversation appears to have reached a conclusion, the second voice (which I’m beginning to think belongs to someone who has just awoken from a decades long coma) continues “It was, like, out of this world. Did it come from the stars?”

Bewildering.

Jaguar

According to their own website, LinkedIn is “the world’s largest professional network with more than 1 billion members in more than 200 countries”. Their mission is to “connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.” The reality is that it is just full of people moaning. Landlords moaning that proposals to strengthen tenants’ rights will make their businesses unprofitable, farmers moaning that they might now have to pay tax like the rest of us, people earning £150k moaning that all their taxes go to people claiming £30k on benefits and they’d have a far better life if they moved to Dubai (bye then).

Recently it’s been full of people moaning about the re-launch of luxury car brand Jaguar. First it was the logo, big cat gone replaced with nice clear cut sans serif font, then the teaser video which - and this can’t have been the first time a car manufacturer played this trick - didn’t feature the car being advertised. And then the new electric Type 00 itself which didn’t look like an old school Jag.

But the comments on LinkedIn went beyond moaning, just outright abuse “Was the logo designed by a 10 year old?”, “Woke Copied Garbage”, “a Betrayal of they’re legacy” (sic). How do people have time, why do people care? It’s just a car.

No armrest, no ashtray though.