Deja View: Is Ogilvy SA’s VW Polo GTi ‘Test Drive Dating’ concept the same as Euro RSCG Sydney’s ‘Test Drive Dating’ concept for Volvo in 2008?
June 8 2011, 1:13 pm | | 4 Comments
Ad punters might remember the Volvo ‘Test Drive Dating’ integrated campaign via Euro RSCG, Sydney that was a finalist at Cannes in 2008.
Well it seems Ogilvy South Africa has a rather similar idea going in their latest work for the VW Polo GTi.
The Euro RSCG, Sydney creative team on Volvo were Tim Cheng and Peter Maniaty under ECD Rowan Dean.
4 Comments
While the campaigns share similarities and a similar name, they are actually very different.
The Ozzie campaign centred around inviting a group of 20 strangers to a Volvo dealership for a speed dating session. Once in the dealership, people would get inside stationary Volvos and chat to someone they’ve never met for 8 minutes – much like a typical speed date. The only difference being that instead of sitting at tables in a room, the daters sat inside a stationary car inside a dealership. At no stage was there ever any actual driving of the cars. So it wasn’t a test drive at all, but rather a packaged speed date service inside a Volvo Dealership. Nor was there ever any data recording, to prove that the car makes its driver more attractive.
The Volkswagen Campaign, on the other hand, allows people to anonymously borrow and drive a Polo GTI for an entire evening, to pick up a love interest of their choice in the car, take them out , impress them and improve their chances of getting lucky because of the car – ultimately to prove that the car makes its driver more attractive/desirable. This is also all monitored live from a website.
Each Polo GTI driver is rigged with a heart-rate monitor for the date, and is given a phone app which allows them to tweet their progress to the website during the course of the evening – so people out there can follow and see just how much luckier the Driver gets because of the car.
The one is a true test drive and an actual date (all monitored live). The other is simply a speed dating session which happens to take place inside a Volvo dealeship – the cars are almost incidental. Which is not to say that the Volvo campaign is bad, it’s just very different.
So again, while the campaigns share similarities, probabably stem from a similar insight and share a similar name, they are very different for a number of reasons.
Sorry guys: Same idea. Same insight. Same gag (get your leg over in a Volvo/volkswagen.) The new campaign has a few more online frills but let’s face it – it’s been done. Oh, and btw the Volvo campaign started in dealerships but then went on to off- premise test drives as well, so you can’t even blow your own vuvuzela over that either.
Same idea but Volkswagen was done better.
So give it better metal. That’s what usually happens at Cannes?
Boere Wars
I just watched the Volvo AV and read the campaign boards. It doesn’t look like any of the Volvo participants ever left the dealership or drove the cars or took anyone on a date in the cars. . sO I actually agree with ‘debatable.’ The Volvo thing looks like no more than a speed dating session that happened to use a Volvo dealership as a venue. Sure some people requested test drives after, but these would’ve been nothing more than a normal test drive you’d get at a dealership anywhere in the world on any day… just a regular old test drive. So I think The 2 campaign ideas and the mechanics are very different, which is important in activations because the core of the idea is usually a clever mechanic. And the mechanic is usually fundamental to the idea. That said I do like both campaigns although I find the VW website a little confusing.