Porsche Taycan in The Heist Super Bowl commercial.
If you want more proof that electric vehicles are headed for the big time, just watch the Super Bowl this weekend. As companies try to get the most bang for their many bucks that they spend to get an ad on the air during the game by releasing the spots early, we’re getting a glimpse of the few minutes when EVs will take over TV screens across the country this Sunday.
Exhibit One: Audi is using a mildly catchy song that you might have heard before as a plea to let the past go in favor of electric drive. In this case, the things that we’re supposed to let go are being stuck in traffic, people drinking soda in their cars and guys yelling out of their trucks, apparently. An announcer on the radio does mention the temperature being hotter than average, but how driving an electric car – in this case a Audi e-tron Sportback – solves the rest of the problems the ad portrays is not answered in within the ad by the 2andSunny Amsterdam agency at all. At least it has Arya Stark, I mean actress Masie Williams, singing and having a good time behind the wheel of an EV.
Audi isn’t the only VW Group brand that’s bringing plug-in power to the Big Game. Porsche is showing an ad called “The Heist,” and has a longer, two-minute version up online already:
Porsche has long understood that advertising an electric vehicle is about more than climate change or helping the environment. A few years ago, if memory serves, since I cannot find the video online any more, the company had an ad for the Mission-E (the precursor name for the Taycan) that showed the car racing a spark that’s traveling through the electric wires alongside the road. The message was that EVs are fast and fun, and dispensed with any direct environmental message.
That’s pretty much the same vibe you get form Porsche’s new Super Bowl ad, the brand’s first since 1997. Set at a slightly fictionalized Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, Germany with an amazing lack of security, the video is an excuse to get a bunch of classic Porsche vehicles – like the 917 K racing car, the 918 Spyder hybrid and the iconic Porsche 911 – racing through European roads in pursuit of the new Taycan. The Taycan, called here “an electric car that steals you,” outruns them all for a spell, and when the ad it over, the chase just starts up again. Based on what we see here, being a security guard for the Porsche Museum looks like a lot of fun, especially when you can drive an EV. Seems like we have a theme going.
