Exercise of the day: Compare & Contrast.
Okay, let's see what material we have: Two commercials aired on the Super Bowl night.
First, Chrysler: They went for the patriotic card!
Bob Dylan, explaining, I quote: "It is made with the one thing you can't import from anywhere else: American Pride."
I liked it: it says yes to globalisation: "Let German brew your beer (...) we will build your car"
Chrysler highlighted great values and generated posititive sentiment towards the brand, and towards America as a whole, who wouldn't like that?
But Chrysler did not take any risk, didn't they?
By not doing so, they actually might end up taking a bigger one: this commercial being forgotten easily.
Indeed, the Super Bowl crowd is expecting greatness, each year.
Furthermore, TV now requires brand to take on a lot of investment, both in money and in brains: They need watchers' full attention and this is not an easy task: people have their own schedule, they switch their focus from one device to another, and skip the commercials to go do or watch something else.
So was this a good idea for Chrysler to play it safe?
My opinion: low risk, low return, right?
Now: Coke - They played the Melting pot Card!
No need for them to generate awareness: It is a more than established brand. And that is the thing: if they had done something classic like Chrysler, people around the world would not have been talking about it, even one week after the Super Bowl.
Even if backlashes are violent - see the Twitter trend thread for #AmericaIsBeautiful - I do not think Coca Cola really cared about creating controversies. It was a 'controlled' risk.
Their primary aim is to be visible, and to engage with consumers. They want to create buzz, hoping the positive sentiment will take over the large amount of negative reactions. In that case, Coca Cola knew what they were doing.
And not to ignore one thing: even though both are very unique in their style and both generated different reactions, both have adopted a global perspective of America, whether it is the people of America in Coca Cola video, or the products consumed in America, as Bob simply put it in Chrysler Ad.
