Volkswagen Bark Side Commercial: 2012 Super Bowl Teaser

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.

Jennifer Manocchio

President

After starting her career with Edelman in Chicago, Jennifer joined Sweeney and quickly established herself as an exceptional industry innovator. In 2004, she opened Sweeney’s first full-service office outside of Cleveland and quickly rose through the ranks to become agency president. Jen leads by example and without fear. She has been critical to agency growth throughout the past decade and continues to lead the agency into the future.