Now that the Super Bowl ad has come and gone and lives on digitally and in the ashes of controversy over the spot, in real time Volkswagen is trying to move on. Its new commercial, "Mask," aims to do just that. A quietly funny spot by Deutsch LA, it's directed by Noam Murro, who directed the Super Bowl spot for Taco Bell.

And speaking of the Super Bowl, others associated with VW's "Get In. Get Happy" Game Day ad —the story of a tall white guy with a Jamaican accent—are still trying to milk the Super Bowl appearance for all it's worth.Continue reading...

Automakers still hold their breath each year when Consumer Reports comes out with its vehicle-reliability ratings. The annual assessment — based on the publication's own research and a survey of its subscribers — traditionally have carried weight with car brands and with many Americans who've always looked to CR as a sort of bible for smart consumption.

But do the ratings have the clout they used to? Maybe not. As Bloomberg points out, several of the nameplates that were dinged worst by Consumer Reports lately are doing quite well, thank you. For instance, the Volkswagen Passat, built in Tennessee, and the new Honda Civic, introduced last year, initially lost the magazine's coveted "Recommended" rating. This year, in the magazine's just-released new ratings, Passat returned to "Recommended" status — but Civic didn't.

Last year, Consumer Reports said that the new Passat had lost "some of the sharpness" of its predecessors and that the overhauled Civic had introduced too many cheaper materials to the interior. Both VW and Honda are crying all the way to the bank over the dissing. Sales of the new Passat in October, for example, were up by 66 percent over a year earlier, when the new model was just coming into volume production.Continue reading...

Volkswagen has taken another step in mainstreaming its brand in the U.S. market, where new models and high hopes have made American consumers more important than ever. The brand has launched a new marketing campaign, "Why VW," and a social microsite featuring all ages and ethnicities in a bid "to capture and share the stories of Volkswagen owners and fans in a whole new way as well as draw new consumers into the Volkswagen experience," as Volkswagen of America put it in a press release today.

The ad campaign and the social hub, designed to encourage storytelling and spark conversations on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and YouTube, represent two new facets of a broadening effort that the brand has been undertaking for about three years now after VW Group honchos in Germany decided that the U.S. market — which had suffered on a side burner for decades — would indeed prove important for their dreams of leading the globe in auto sales.

"We have a lot of new products right now; we're not just a Jetta and Beetle company," Justin Osborne, general manager of marketing communications for Volkswagen of America, told brandchannel. "We're resonating with a much broader and larger base, and we have products that are aligned with consumer tastes."Continue reading...

Volkwagen today released "The Dog Strikes Back," the full version of VW's 2012 Super Bowl commercial — or a commercial within a commercial, as it references the golden retriever from "The Force," its blockbuster 2011 Super Bowl ad featuring a mini Darth Vader and the Volkswagen Passat ... before seguing to a full-on Star Wars mode by pulling back to a recreation of the cantina scene and the real Darth Vader.

This year the brand is promoting the new Beetle, as VW America president and CEO Jonathan Browning commented to the Wall Street Journal: "We didn't just want to make a follow-on or a sequel, but looked at this and said what are some of the other themes around Super Bowl? It's all about athleticism, it's all about competing to the best level you can, and also for VW, it's all about how we're rebuilding the business here in the U.S."

As for tying back into Star Wars, Browning added, "We wanted to have that little twist at the end, and hinted at that in the teaser" — meaning "The Bark Side" canine chorus, which has been viewed more than 10 million times on YouTube, and which you can watch again below. VW's pushing out of that teaser — a home run for combining Star Wars with cute dogs — arguably opened the floodgates for the deluge of pre-Super Bowl ad reveals this year.Continue reading...

Nielsen this week released its list of the top advertisements of the year.

“The lists demonstrate that reality and scripted shows continued to find innovative ways to integrate brands into their broadcast primetime programming. The best liked ads reflect the enduring value of traditional ad elements that have withstood the test of time – strong creative, simple and engaging messaging, and a solid emotional connection,” says Nielsen in a blog post.

The commercials must have aired in U.S. primetime on a broadcast channel any time from Jan. 1 to Nov. 30, 2011. The Likeability Score is the percentage of TV viewers who report to like “a lot” an ad they were exposed to during the normal course of viewing TV, with these scores indexed against the mean score for all new ads during the period (Likeability Index). (100) equals average.

The #1 best-liked ad is Volkswagen's Star Wars nod of a Super Bowl ad ("The Force," or as many called it, "Little Darth Vader") for its new Passat, at top, which scored 231 on Nielsen's Likeability Index. Read about the rest of the top 10 below.Continue reading...

The brand that might be taking biggest advantage of the challenges facing Toyota and Honda in the U.S. market isn't from Detroit — it's from Wolfsburg.

Volkswagen keeps rolling up huge sales increases in America this year, today reporting a whopping 40% jump in October sales over a year ago. In fact, on the last day of October, VW already surpassed its U.S. sales total of about 264,000 for all of 2010.

Sales for the entire U.S. auto industry in October strengthened modestly from September on a seasonally adjusted basis.

"We hit it out of the park" in October, Jonathan Browning, CEO of Volkswagen of America, commented on a call with reporters this morning. "Clearly it's an impact of having strong products in the marketplace offering great safety, quality and value."Continue reading...

Volkwagen's 2012 Beetle was teased in a memorable Super Bowl spot earlier this year, and now has its first official commercial, launching Monday: "High Five," which uses The Clapping Song by Shirley Ellis and recalls another VW Super Bowl spot, "Punch Dub."

According to the New York Times' Stuart Elliott, the brand is getting ready to roll out follow-up spots to "The Force," the mini Darth Vader Passat spot from this year's Super Bowl that has racked up more than 42 million views on YouTube.

Take a closer look at the 2012 Beetle below.Continue reading...

Chattanooga is like Wolfsburg West today, with Volkswagen AG executives swarming the company’s new state-of-the-art, eco-forward assembly plant in Tennessee to celebrate the grand opening of its first assembly facility in the United States in two decades. VW is starting to make a significantly improved new Passat mid-size sedan at the plant and will begin selling the car this fall.

But the Volkswagen executives in Tennessee — and at the company’s kick-off of a new partnership with the Museum of Modern Art in New York City yesterday —also have been talking about something else that is essential to lifting their paltry 3-percent market share in the United States: a clarification and strengthening of their brand.Continue reading...