ADdicted: Humanizing Technology
- David Pullara
- May 25
- 1 min read
If I ask you to think of a "car ad", odds are good you'll visualize a vehicle making its way down a winding road, likely because that trope has been (over)used in car ads for decades.
Most car ads tend to focus on relative performance, styling, or product features.*
Which is why most car ads are predictable, dull, and completely forgettable.
But what would happen if, instead of focusing on the car's performance features, an ad highlighted the utility and familiarity of the technologies found in the vehicle?
Babies taking their first steps, children struggling to see the stage at concerts, and parents putting a sleeping child to bed are not visuals you would normally expect to see in a car ad.
Which is why Volkswagen's "We Didn't Invent Anything" ads are so great.
I love technology, and I don't mind it when great technologies are featured.
But the idea of humanizing technology is a far more compelling advertising idea.
* There have been some notable exceptions over the years, most of which were introduced as big-budget Super Bowl ads: my favourites are VW's The Force and Volvo's The Epic Split.
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