Quote:
Originally Posted by SCOTT26
...they are aiming at ... a fashionable lifestyle ... and the Cabrio at the female demographic.
In Germany and Europe we are going for a Emotional approach ...
The Cabrio ... will be photographed and filmed in especially hot climates . ... image of sun sea and sand ...
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Over the years both the BMW and MINI brands have been marketed quite successfully, and it's apparent that considerable thought and money went into these image campaigns. Generally, car manufacturers have refrained from targeting a vehicle primarily to a particularl gender, but I wouldn't be surprised if BMW were able to pull off a stunt like this, as Scott26 suggests is being contemplated. Notwithstanding the power of persuasian through media imagery (both subtle and overt), I believe the new BMW Coupé must first establish its credentials as a genuine performance-oriented sports vehicle, with a distinct masculine cachet, in order for the subsequent juxtaposition of the comparatively "soft" (rag-top), open and exposed, care-free and explicitly female-oriented Cabrio experience to achieve its most effective projection in the minds of the target group.
The fourth S-word, after "sun, sea, and sand", that Scott26 omitted is of course SEX, and this key element will undoubtedly play a part in the cabrio ad campaign. Since the multi-culti approach to portraying a fashionable, yet politically correct lifestyle seems to be quite trendy and almost ubiquitous in advertising nowadays (the well-dressed Black male in the presence of the Asian female -- yet hardly the other way around -- has already become somewhat of a cliché, even here in Germany, where one would hardly ever encounter these two types of peope together, except possibly at the two main airports), I'm already wondering if the images that we could eventually see in the American market might be something along the lines of the distinctly Germanic blonde female driving her topless Cabrio, say, on the hot Caribbean island of Jamaica (where she has perhaps come for a sex vacation, as the viewer might imagine, in addition to showing off and driving her BMW) while seated next to her temporary male companion, with distinctive white, smiling teeth offset against much darker complexion and dreadlock hair. I recall an official Porsche photo from a few years back, showing a blonde woman driving a red Boxster with blurry wheels and an olive-skinned Mediterranean type guy with black hair sitting beside her. (Of course they were both smiling.)
In my view, Audi has done an excellent job of expressing this general kind of Sun-Sea-Sand-Sex imagery in a video format without resorting to the male-female ethnic duality cliché, which many still regard as superficial or offensive. It's available on their German web site, featuring the A3 Sportback, with Berlin license plate, and the almost obligatory "69" integrated in the four-digit number. A female living in a modern art see-through Bauhaus style cottage overlooking the ocean takes her Audi Sportback on the winding coastal road to pick up her masculine "boyfriend", along with his mini surfboard and supplemental equipment. She drives him to go kite-surfing with his buddies, while she watches. Parked directly on the sandy beach is her Audi, over which her friend gracefully flies over in the ocean sunset, suggesting this could be somewhere in Portugal or California. They drive home together, but instead of engaging in you-know-what, she throws him the keys, and they both drive off into the sunset so he can enjoy being behind the wheel.
http://microsites.audi.com/a3_sportb..._DE/index.html
Obviously, if one looks at this critically, the sun should already have gone down by this time, but the implicit point seems to be that driving that particular car is more fun than doing you-know-what.