Watching Volvo try to blindly find its way…
1 min readMar 1, 2017
Why is this ad so polarizing and mostly disliked?
But this one so liked?
Last summer, Volvo launched a version of the first ad. For the purposes of this post, I am showing the long form version of these ads. Most people will know of the first one from a :30 spot in which most of the chatter was centered around confusion of what the hell was going on in this ad.
The confusion was justified.
But what is it that makes the first ad fall flat and the second pique interest. Stylistically they’re not that far removed. The cars in both cases are gorgeous but here it is in two sentences.
In the first ad the car is irrelevant to the experience.
In the second ad the car is the impetus to the experience.
Guess which one gets butts in seats?
