To a pulsating beat, hip-hop star Eminem drives a sleek Chrysler through the streets of Detroit, proudly cruising by the city’s landmarks, towering skyscrapers and the hopeful faces of its people. His journey ends with an unapologetic message: “This is the Motor City, and this is what we do.”
A day after it aired, one of the most-talked about Super Bowl ads from the football championship sent shivers of pride through the battered city, which hopes car buyers are willing to look past Chrysler’s billion-dollar bailout and embrace the idea that if a vehicle is “Imported from Detroit,” that’s reason enough to buy it.
“It’s like an anthem or rallying cry for Detroit,” Aaron Morrison of Mason City, Iowa, told Associated Press via Facebook. “It makes me want to buy my next car made in America.”
Morrison, a photographer, said the ad even inspired him to consider moving to Detroit to work for Chrysler.
The two-minute ad was unusual for its length, airing during a broadcast in which a 30-second spot costs $3 million. And it framed the gritty urban images, including vacant factories, with an attitude that embraced the city’s past and its survival instinct.
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For Chrysler, which emerged from bankruptcy in June 2009, right before General Motors, the commercial kicked off an advertising campaign that it hopes draws buyers back to showrooms and revives the brand.
“Detroit’s ascendancy mirrors Eminem’s own struggles and accomplishments,” Chrysler brand CEO and president Olivier Francois said in an e-mail to the AP. “This is not simply yet another celebrity in a TV spot. It has meaning. Like his music and story, the new Chrysler is ‘Imported from Detroit’ with pride.”
Of course, the tag line is not without some irony: Italian automaker Fiat Group SpA now owns 25% of Chrysler, and the ad was produced by Wieden + Kennedy, a Portland, Oregon-based agency known for its work with Nike. Chrysler switched after its previous advertising agency, BBDO, closed its Detroit office.
Still, Chrysler said, the entire commercial was shot in Detroit with a local cast and crew, and the voiceover work was done by Kevin Yon, who is from Michigan.
The out-of-state involvement did not bother Matt Clayson, 30, who is undertaking a Motor City turnaround of his own. In 2007, he and his wife bought a large but uninhabitable foreclosed home in Detroit’s West Indian Village.
“It’s interesting that it took an outside eye… to really kind of cut to some of the core basics of what is a city and what is a place,” said Clayson, an attorney and director of the Detroit Creative Corridor, a non-profit that aims to establish the city as a global centre for creative innovation.
“They did something right, definitely. I’m not an expert, but I think they really summed up kind of where we’ve been and where we are as a city.”
The real test of the ad will be whether it stirs consumers to reconsider Chrysler–and by extension the town that put the world on wheels.
“I think it is a defining moment for the auto industry. It really was good for all the carmakers,” said Bob Kolt, an instructor at Michigan State University in the advertising, public relations and retailing department. Kolt and his colleagues have been tracking and rating Super Bowl ads for 14 years. The Chrysler ad drew high praise, although the top two rankings went to Volkswagen AG ads.
“Will it work? I don’t know. We’ll probably know soon,” he said. “It really sort of tried to redefine Chrysler, and it did that effectively.”
Brenda Harvill, 60, of Detroit, said the commercial gave her community “a new image as a comeback city.”
“We were down for a while,” she acknowledged. “But guess what? We’re back.”
