There are some great electric car ads out there, but there are also a lot that are complete crap. Sometimes it seems like we are back in the 1990s and manufacturers are really trying not to sell their vehicles. GM’s upcoming 2016 Chevy Volt looks like a wonderful car, even much better than the first-generation Volt. Yet, GM decided to make a horribly boring commercial for it that doesn’t focus on its many strengths. I was shocked, honestly.
James wrote about the boring ad here on EV Obsession less than a month ago. One of our readers dropped a note under the article that he reworked the ad a bit to actually highlight the Volt’s benefits a bit. I thought it was an improvement and was going to write an article about it, but before I got to that…
The reader, Mark Renburke, noted that some people “complained about the computer-like graphics of the GM source video I used (not realizing it was GM stock, thinking I made it lol) so suggested I use some of GM’s real footage.” Pretty hilarious that people thought the crappy video graphics came from an amateur fan rather than GM itself… goes to show how poor of an ad the original was. Anyhow, Mark took that feedback and created a completely new, much better ad himself, using nice photos of the hot new Chevy Volt, and highlighting very well some of the key stats of Volt 2.0. His hope “is that GM might run with some of these idea and produce a truly professional grade advert for mainstream media/go viral.” That would be nice, but given GM’s track record advertising the Volt, um….
With all of that context out of the way, the two ads are below, in chronological order:
WoW