Xenophon Strategies

The Force is With Volkswagen

Jason Meath

Volkswagen’s “The Force” Super Bowl ad is the latest example that advertising can last a lot longer than 30 seconds.  The ad, in which a little boy in a Darth Vader costume tries to summon "The Force" on objects, including a Passat, was released days before Super Bowl XLV.  The result?  The ad quickly went viral -- registering more than 12.5 million views on YouTube, 10,000 comments and 62,000 Facebook "likes."  After the game, the commercial was the overwhelming fan favorite in numerous polls, including SILive.com,BrandBowl.com, Adbowl.com and Mashable.com — beating out such burly, bawdy ‘made-for-the-man cave’ commercials from GoDaddy, Doritos and Bud Light.   

Not only was the little squirt Darth Vader funny, engaging and straining the cute-o-meter, it was what a lot of Super Bowl ads are not these days: wholesome, tasteful and charming.  Can such benign, old-fashioned traits strike a chord with cheese-heads, terrible towel wavers and general rowdy bowl-watchers?  111 million football viewers couldn’t possibly identify with a little boy in a Darth Vader costume woefully conjuring ‘The Force...’ could they?  Well of course — these viewers are parents, many from the original ‘Star Wars generation,’ who might have owned that same costume.  I know I did!  Moreover, it was appealing across gender lines — important when nearly half of the Super Bowl audience is made up of women.

But the saga continues.  The ad-makers cleverly cast 6-year-old actor Max Page as Darth Vader, a boy who was born with a congenital heart defect and wears a pacemaker.  Max’s story suddenly added new interest, value and heart-warming significance.  NBC’s Today Show booked Max the very next day to tell his story.  Even the real Darth Vader, James Earl Jones, posed in New York  for a photo-op with Max — sending blogs and human interest websites whirring all over the world.  To extend the ad’s life even further, Volkswagen released a “Making of” video on YouTube.  The ad, and the story behind it crossed all sorts of demographic lines, catapulting it into water cooler conversation everywhere — an advertiser’s dream come true.   

The moral of the story?  One of the best moments of the 2011 Super Bowl came from an unlikely pint-sized patient from Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles.  Just ask Volkswagen.   

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