My husband and I were watching The Middle on DVR last night. The entire show revolved around the family “borrowing” their neighbors new Volkswagen Passat while they were on vacation. Every member of the family basked in the luxury of the new Passat, highlighting some of the car’s features.
We watch The Middle pretty regularly, and I don’t recall many product placements. So the constant Passat plugging was a bit out of the ordinary and over the top. It was basically a 30-minute commercial for Volkswagen.
About two-thirds of the way through the show, my husband stopped fast forwarding through the commercials. He loves dogs, and tends to watch any commercial with the lovely four legged friends.
The commercial featured about a dozen dogs barking an iconic tune from Star Wars. At the end, there was a very quick plug for Volkswagen and to stay tuned for their 2012 Super Bowl commercial.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6ntDYjS0Y3w
We absolutely loved the teaser. And all the Passat product placement (aka the 30 minute Volkswagen commercial) began to make perfect sense.
The teaser was an excellent continuation of Volkswagen’s stellar 2011 Super Bowl commercial with the “kid” Darth Vader. But the company has certainly set the stage for another leading Super Bowl commercial. Let’s just hope Volkswagen meets our expectations, or we will all be very disappointed.