Chrysler is rolling across America’s consciousness, bouncing on a relentless hip-hop beat and embracing Detroit, a city brand to which it was tightly lashed when the American auto sector buckled in 2008.
Chrysler’s two-minute Super Bowl spot put Motor City rapper Eminem behind the wheel of its 200 model while his hit “Lose Yourself” scores scenes from Detroit’s urban core. “It’s as much about where it’s from as who it’s for,” says the voiceover before the new tag line comes on screen: Imported From Detroit.
The spot is moody, evocative and tells its story well, but hangs an entire campaign on one very troubled region. What good is one city to a national brand that must make its message work from Los Angeles to Miami? “There were lots of conversations, doubts and second guessing about what could and would happen,” said Joe Staples, a creative director at Weiden & Kennedy, the agency behind the ad. “It was ‘Would people care about Detroit? Has Detroit been given up? Are people frustrated because of the history of the city?”
The agency eventually went with the idea because they felt the city grounded the campaign “geographically and emotionally. We thought the Detroit spirit would resonate with people… We thought it would be a story that represents individuals as well as a city.” Staples said the gamble paid off “massively.” Weiden & Kennedy has received “hundreds” of e-mails from Detroit residents past and present, as well as Americans coast to coast. The consensus on Twitter is overwhelmingly positive, and the media have chosen the ad as one of the Super Bowl’s best.
And while the ad undeniably broke through the clutter, the strategy of keying in on one region to anchor a campaign is not entirely new. Dan Pawych, executive creative director at KBSP Canada, once steered Alexander Keith’s “Imported from Nova Scotia” beer campaign from the nowdefunct Downtown Partners. He said regionality is a great marketing tool if it’s authentic. Nova Scotia gives Keith’s “caché, because that’s its origin. They have a little brewery there with history… It provided a premium quality to the brand,” which translated to premium beer prices at many Toronto bars.
Matt Phillips, founder of his eponymous brewery in Victoria, was a hit on Vancouver Island when he celebrated the nearby blue-collar navy town where he first opened up shop. All his dazzling labels featured the cheeky “Imported from Esquimalt” tag. “Implying that we were ‘importing’ it from across the bridge to downtown, really underscored the local connection,” he says. “We were also trying for humour, partly because it’s a matter of importing it a few kilometres, but also partly because Esquimalt is not known as an exotic destination.” Levi’s is also gambling on a downtrodden city with its work in Braddock, Penn. The company’s overall “Go Forth” positioning birthed “We Are All Workers” last summer, which led to its efforts in Braddock—a small town that lost 90% of its population due to plant closures. Levi’s sponsored the renovation of its community centre, library and urban farm, filming residents and renovations for a series of short online documentaries. It featured the town in its own two-minute television opus about Americans overcoming financial adversity.
“We were taught about how the pioneers went into the West,” says the child narrator. “They opened their eyes and made up what things could be. A long time ago, things got broken here. People got sad and left… People think there aren’t frontiers anymore. They can’t see how frontiers are all around us.” Pawych believes Chrysler’s fighting optimism will work as a platform. “To me, it’s the optimism of ‘We were big once, but we’re back… America’s coming back.’”
Or, as Staples put it, “It’s the Rocky story, but it’s real.”
