Analysis of an Advert: The Parents for Volvo
In This Ad, Volvo uses the tale of new parents as a metaphor
Directed by Niclas Larsson for Volvo, The Parents tells the tale of new parents and their adaptations to care for their curious toddlers.
The Parents begins with a couple staring in awe at an ultrasound. They will be having twins. The film jumps forward to sometime after the birth. The parents are now dealing with early mornings, towers of diapers, and new problems once the twins learn to walk. The Parents babyproof their home, protecting their children from points and edges. Their lives become an unrelenting stream of work, sleepless nights, diaper changes, and chasing toddlers. At the film’s climax, The Mother heads out to purchase more diapers. As she drives The Mother nods off, drawn to sleep by the brief moment of serenity the car has allowed. She is drifting into a lane of oncoming traffic when the car alerts her and shifts back into its lane. With an accident avoided The Mother makes it home safe.
For most of the film, what is being sold (the Volvo XC60) is not directly acknowledged. The car rarely makes an appearance. Before the climax, which directly includes the XC60, the vehicle only gets about 11 seconds on screen. At the same time, the feature of the XC60 the ad is highlighting (Lane Keeping Aid) is metaphorically and thematically present throughout the film.
The film is clever in its ability to metaphorically present the purpose of Lane Keeping Aid while simultaneously crafting a story that organically integrates the use of this feature into its narrative. The purpose of Volvo’s Lane Keeping Aid is to prevent the driver from drifting into harm. This also happens to be the main function of The Mother and The Father within The Parents.
The film is very economical in its storytelling, intentionally focusing on specific aspects of childcare. The film spends no time focused on bottle-feeding, bath time, or cleaning up messes. For the most part, The Parents focuses on two aspects of childcare:
1.) The purchase and use of diapers. This aspect is presented early on to set up for what occurs at the film’s climax.
2.) The second and more significant aspect of childcare the film focuses on is protecting the toddlers from injury.
As the children joyfully explore their world, their parents chase them to prevent them from tumbling or running into harm. The parents guide the toddlers towards safer paths. They add baby gates and tennis balls to their home to prevent their children from crashing into things.
This is also the purpose of Volvo’s Lane Keeping Aid. The XC60 prevents the driver from running into harm. When they drift, the XC60 guides the driver towards safer paths. Lane Keeping Aid prevents drivers from crashing into things.
While presenting this metaphor, the film also manages to neatly integrate a literal example of Lane Keeping Aid into its narrative. For this literal example to emotionally connect, the film must get the audience to empathize with the characters and their circumstances. Gradually, the film sets up The Mother’s fatigue and uses a variety of aesthetic choices to get the audience to empathize with her.
The Music
Pete Seeger’s Hard Times in the Mill plays throughout The Parents. The song was originally written to describe the arduous life of textile workers in the 1800s but is repurposed in The Parents to tell the story of new parents.
Musically, the song is fast-paced and repetitive which is fitting for describing the life of textile workers but also applies to the lives of new parents. Lyrically the song can also apply to new parents.
The textile workers within the narrative of the Hard Times in the Mill must wake early to the noise of work and alarm bells, regardless of if they feel rested or not.
Every mornin’ at half-past four
You hear the cooks hop on the floor…“Every morning just at five
Gotta get up, dead or alive…”“Every mornin’ right at six
Don’t that ol’ bell make you sick…”
Similarly, the parents of The Parents must wake at early hours to the noise of their crying children, regardless of their fatigue.
An’ every night when I go home
A piece o’ cornbread an’ an ol’ jawbone
It’s hard times in the mill my love
Hard times in the mill
Further on, these lyrics indicate that even in moments of rest and respite from work in the mill there is a lack of comfort. These lyrics could be an apt description of the parent’s inability to comfortably rest even in the brief opportunities they get.
The song presents a very strict structure of two lines describing an event occurring at the mill before returning to the refrain of …
“It’s hard times in the mill my love
Hard times in the mill”
The lack of a break from structure and the repetitious structure echoes the life of a new parent: looping, wearisome, and without pause.
Editing & Cinematography
The choices in editing and cinematography also contribute to empathizing with the parents. When the film begins, the camera is allowed to linger on longer tracking shots. As the film progresses, briefer, more kinetic shots replace these. This results in the film feeling more chaotic over time.
As the climax approaches, the film feeds into this chaos by playing with visual distortion. There are moments of overexposure, undercranking, and step printing. It also plays with time by having time jumps from night to day.
There are also moments of audio distortions where Hard Times in the Mill skips like scratched vinyl. These choices help the viewer connect with the sleep deprivation and disorientation that can come from being a new parent.
In the climax, the film offers a break from the visual and literal noise. The film slows as The Mother drives to and from the shop. Hard Times in the Mill fades slowly and quiet ambient music creeps out from behind it. The images slow, with still and lengthy shots returning. The composition of the images in the climax are simpler. Before the climax, the frame is full of things to look at. During the climax, the frame is full of negative space, with little to draw the eye.
Like The Mother of The Parents, the audience is lulled into the silent, still, moment as she falls asleep. It’s a break from the fast, loud, and repetitive.
Logically, it is relatively easy to demonstrate the value of XC60’s Lane Keeping Assist. Many car manufacturers present similar features in their ads, but they do it in dry, cold ways. They do not emotionally connect and merely inform the consumer of the feature’s existence. Making Lane Keeping Assist emotionally evocative is much more difficult.
The Parents succeeds in doing this by not only demonstrating the use of Lane Keeping Assist realistically and organically, but also by establishing why Volvo values keeping you safe.
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