Recently, my dad, who is in the advertising business, showed me a commercial he had seen on his previous trip to England. The commercial was for the new Ford SportKa, a type of English car. The ad starts out with a Ka in the drive way, a cat walks onto the screen and sits in front of the car. The Ka’s sunroof suddenly opens and the curious cat approaches it. The cat sticks it’s head into the sunroof and suddenly the sunroof closes, decapitating the cat. The words “FordSportKa: The Ka’s Evil Twin” come onto the screen. This ad has stuck in my mind, well because it was so morbid of course. But being so morbid makes the commercial almost funny at the same time. It’s kind of that stereotypical dark, British humor. The fact that the line at the end says “the Ka’s evil twin” culminates the entire commercial, adding humor to it. An old Ka would never do this, but this new “badass” looking SportKa would. And though I don’t condone the killing of innocent animals, I find the ad humorous. I don’t think the actual ad would make me want to buy the car but if I was ever looking to buy a new car and saw a SportKa, it would definitely trigger back those memories of the commercial and might influence me to buy it.
Overall, I think it is an effective commercial. It is so memorable, I mean who is going to forget a dead cat? More consumers are going to think back to the entertaining Ford SportKa commercial than a boring Chevy commercial. Though it could be considered violent, most people are going to see it as more of a laugh and in the end, Ford will see pleasing results from this ad. I think Ford is pretty smart for using this ad to campaign the Ford SportKa.

Check out the commercial here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Guufs3mdgg