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Minivans – Denial and Acceptance
When I surrendered 2 years ago and bought a minivan I felt like a complete sell-out. I felt defeated and completely lame. There were tears shed at the dealership (don’t get me started on the fight I had with the sales guy who only called my husband by name) and I refused to learn how to put in the third row of seats or use the remote controlled doors. The first time I drove it I insisted on wearing stilettos just to show that *#!% Honda Odyssey who’s boss.
To console ourselves, my husband and I decided we were going to rebrand the minivan and call it a MUV – a multi-use vehicle. We threw the term around for a while but it didn’t stick. Fast forward 2 years and I’m driving the minivan and I’ll admit I don’t entirely hate it. What I still hate is how the minivan is marketed – as a compromise, as something for people with no style, as a generic mass market baby mover driven by mommies.
So VW’s campaign for the new Routan minivan caught my eye. Its tagline is “Have a baby for love. Not for German Engineering.” The premise is that the vehicle is so awesome that people are getting pregnant just to buy it. With Brooke Shield’s as a cleverly cast spokeswoman they produced a great satirical video http://www.vw.com/ where she confronts pregnant women with her accusation that they have gotten knocked up just as a front for buying the Routon. Finally a sense of humor in the automotive category where women are usually the punchline of the joke or dolled up like centerfolds!
The van has some cool features and I think I would have checked it out if it were around in 06. But what I like most about this campaign is that it reveals a significant Whole Truth that coming to terms with driving a minivan takes some serious soul searching for women. Let’s face it, most minivan marketers are happy to settle for the Half Truth when women say “I love my van!”. C’mon who really, really oves their minivan?
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