VOLKSWAGEN / THEORY OF FUN
13 October 2009
Countless brands and marketers have fiddled with the idea of 'fun', hamfistedly trying to align their salad creams and staplers to it. But this quirky new campaign from DDB Stockholm for Volkswagen, titled Rolighetsteorin (which translates roughly as the...
- Brand
- Volkswagen
- Product Category
- Automotive
- Source
- News
- Tags
- Volkswagen
- Stockholm
- DDB Worldwide
Countless brands and marketers have fiddled with the idea of 'fun', hamfistedly trying to align their salad creams and staplers to it. But
this quirky new campaign from DDB Stockholm for Volkswagen,
titled Rolighetsteorin (which translates roughly as the 'theory of
fun') definitely put a smile on our faces and made us want to play - it
is also a solid example of an advertiser giving a little back and
creating something that the consumer just might remember or tell
someone else about. When was the last time you could say that about a
car advertising billboard you saw?
Reminiscent of the piano scene in Big (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KosJK_ZMMu0), the stairs to a subway station were converted into a giant piano keyboard with each step sounding a specific note - encouraging passers by and Tom Hank's Swedish fan club to avoid the escalator and have a little play. The agency pulled off another neat guerilla prank in a local park, fitting a rubbish bin with a sensor which detects each time something is placed inside, then creating a Looney Toons style decreasing whistling sound ending with an eventual 'thump' as if the bin was hundreds of meters deep.
The idea at the center appears to be that happiness is the absolute easiest way to encourage people to make a change to more efficient, greener ways. However, like the salad cream and staplers, it's not very clear how beautifully engineered yet typically characterless cars are trying to slot in amongst the laughter.
Although VW are yet to confirm precisely what this effort is pushing, apparently a separate site will soon show many fun ways to do something for the environment alongside VW's range of environment technologies and cars, presumably the Bluemotion line. So despite a current lack of cohesion it seems like the campaign will all be wrapped up in a typically efficient Germanic manner.
www.thefuntheory.com
Reminiscent of the piano scene in Big (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KosJK_ZMMu0), the stairs to a subway station were converted into a giant piano keyboard with each step sounding a specific note - encouraging passers by and Tom Hank's Swedish fan club to avoid the escalator and have a little play. The agency pulled off another neat guerilla prank in a local park, fitting a rubbish bin with a sensor which detects each time something is placed inside, then creating a Looney Toons style decreasing whistling sound ending with an eventual 'thump' as if the bin was hundreds of meters deep.
The idea at the center appears to be that happiness is the absolute easiest way to encourage people to make a change to more efficient, greener ways. However, like the salad cream and staplers, it's not very clear how beautifully engineered yet typically characterless cars are trying to slot in amongst the laughter.
Although VW are yet to confirm precisely what this effort is pushing, apparently a separate site will soon show many fun ways to do something for the environment alongside VW's range of environment technologies and cars, presumably the Bluemotion line. So despite a current lack of cohesion it seems like the campaign will all be wrapped up in a typically efficient Germanic manner.
www.thefuntheory.com
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