Marco Mannoni
Eric Sabatino
Volkswagen, which means “people’s car”, is one of the most selling automotive companies in history. It has three cars in the top 10 list of best-selling cars of all time, the Volkswagen Golf, the Volkswagen Beetle and the Volkswagen Passat.
The protagonist of the Volkswagen Polo advertisement is a student who is bullied by a group of “cool” guys. The situation changes when he gives a drive to one of the most beautiful girls of the school with his Polo. At the end of the advertisement the bullied guy will look more cool than the other guys thanks to a joke associated with the qualities of his car, the Volkswagen Polo.
The purpose of the advertisement is to persuade young people that Volkswagen Polo is a young car and it’s made for them. As we can see in the advertisement there are only young people who act young, for example the joke that makes the advertisement funny is made only thanks to the qualities of the car and the behavior of the protagonist: if the car wasn’t powerful and the driver wasn’t driving hard, the joke couldn’t have been made.
The advertisement is surely oriented towards a male audience. If we look at the ad we see that the actors are only students, probably university students. The joke that makes the ad funny matches with young people’s habits and behavior.
This means that the target market for this advertisement is very small, it probably goes to a minimum of 18 years old (the age you can get the driving license) to a maximum of 23 years old (possibly your last year as a university student).
This also means that the people who are the target maket probably don’t have any personal income and the car is supposed to be a present by their parents.
The prototype of the target market for this ad is a middle-class 19 years old student who has just graduated from high school and deserves something very cool to start his new college experience in a positive way.
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