Friday, February 4, 2011

The Hard Sell: Toyota Yaris

'Mr Supergrass, who's just sold his soul, makes his bumbling exit into a cab'

"Wimmin. We want them to want it. Adore it. Respect it. More than their shoes! More than their blokes! More than affordable, within-budget, minor rock stars FFS! We want them to form close emotional attachments to quality Japanese engineering, and here's how we're going to do it ?" Give or take a fact or 10, that's pretty much the transcript of Saatchi & Saatchi's opening pitch to Toyota Yaris. In case you've been denied the pleasure, this pitch ? inexplicably ? has made it to the small screen in a televisual cringe hard enough to make your eyeballs cramp. Or, if you believe my mate Andy: it's "a cultural war crime that could have potentially been like a universe-sucking-in-black-hole-effect, Hadron Collider-disaster".

Bit much? Here's how the ad runs: young woman stares at shoes through shop window. Boyfriend gets distracted by Gaz Coombes (Gaz Coombes!). Squeaking, "It's Gaz from Supergrass!" he scrambles over, practising wide-eyed disbelief, to get his Kodak moment with a pair of sideburns. Girlfriend pouts, all duck-like, and deliberately cocks up the photo. Why? Cos her rascal fella slobbered toast crumbs and butter all over her precious Yaris two days earlier. Genius. Mr Supergrass, who's just sold his soul in a terrifyingly awkward scene with an actor not even old enough to have remembered his Britpop glory days, makes his bumbling exit into a cab. Coombes, of course, once claimed that he would never "shit on the name of Supergrass" with something so cheap, or gauche as a reunion. Why bother, when you can take a massive dump on it for the automotive industry instead?

See the ad here


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