A couple of decades ago the BMW "Mouse" commercial, featuring a cute little rodent doing a song and dance act on a BMW 3181 steering wheel to demonstrate power steering, was created in South Africa and exported very successfully all over the world.
But, this doesn't mean, everything works that well.
Take the latest import which shows the impressive Audi R8 muscle car driving through the Italian city of Maranello, much to the annoyance of the local population, who clearly don't enjoy this Teutonic intrusion into the heart of where Ferraris are made.
I've been talking to a lot of local car buffs these past few weeks and I have yet to find one who thinks this ad is any good. In fact, I have come to the conclusion that all it does is prove correct the assertion by local market researchers that 20% of all advertising in this country is not only a complete failure but also damages the brand.
Clearly, this is an import and either the European target market is very different to that here in South Africa or,that Audi Europe and its ad agency have completely lost the plot.
Quite apart from marketing #101 being very specific about avoiding featuring your competitors in your ads, there is very little chance among Ferrari owners in South Africa - both past, present and future - that they would consider moving en mass towards the Audi R8, no matter how good it is.
Ferrari owners don't buy the brand because their cars go fast. They buy it out of highly emotional brand loyalty.
One wonders just what message Audi was trying to get across? To me it all just smacks of a lack of self-confidence.
The point, however, is that even if I am in the minority, which I doubt, why on earth produce a commercial that is going to marginalise even a tiny part of a potential target market?
It irritates me to see these pointless, stilly, ill-conceived imported ads, because if you add up the damage they cause or the sheer cost of their communications inefficiency, one could get the local Audi ad agency to produce something with a lot more impact for a fraction of this wasted cost.
The R8 ad is also a typical example of how far too many ad agencies are still going into campaigns purely on the strength of what they believe is a " big idea." In this day and age of highly competitive marketing, that so-called "big idea" is in fact a very small part of the overall marketing effort.
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