Volkswagon filing charges over viral ad
Around a week ago I linked to a commercial that just sorta wigged me out, which involved a bomber and a Volkswagen Polo. At the time I was mostly curious as to whether or not it was a viral, or some enterprising guys looking to make a name for themselves.
Someone pointed out that the forums on the site I linked to had been updated with the info (a couple of guys doing it on their own, basically) and that was the end of it in my head. But no, this is now getting really, really weird:
Volkswagen filed criminal charges yesterday over a professionally made commercial making rounds on the Internet that features a suicide car-bomber whose attack is stymied when he blows himself up while his VW Polo remains intact.
Company spokesman Hartwig von Sass said yesterday VW lodged a criminal complaint with prosecutors in Brunswick, Germany, but did not specify a perpetrator, according to Reuters. "This is an attack on Volkswagen's good name," he said of the ad. Von Sass called the ad cynical and criminal, Reuters said, but he could not say who made it.
Now, let's go through that, remembering that certain things we take for granted in the USA don't seem to apply in some European countries (which isn't to say we don't have our own weird things... but someone really should make up a cliffnotes version of weirdness between the laws of all the different countries that needs to be accounted for).
First of all, the Volkswagen spokesman makes mention that this could very well affect the VW brand image. Judging by some of the responses I got while showing that around, and my own initial response... that's probably a very valid claim. I guess it would depend on your target audience, but yeah, you can certainly see how something like this could harm the company's reputation if general people saw it linked on a blog somewhere and thought it came from VW itself. If I was Volkswagen, I'd be pretty damn pissed.
However, this was basically a parody of VW'd current 'small, but tough' advertising campaign for the Polo, and here in the USA a certain famous porn publisher, among others, went through a lot of crap to make sure we have parody and satire laws to protect that sort of thing, even if it's incredibly tasteless. Now there might be specific legalities around how it was done, but at least they'd have a shot. Do these sorts of protections exist in Europe?
What I find the oddest, and possibly the most distressing, is that the charges being brought are criminal and not civil, but again perhaps there's no real distinction in their courts? If they do, why on earth would this be criminal? Why does something being cynical make it criminal (their words)?
Due to the internet, the world has suddenly become very small, and one can find oneself wading into way too many areas without fully knowing the rules. I feel like I need a flowchart on my wall to know what it's OK to do on which website, depending on the suffix of the domain.
Either way, this is gets just a little weirder:
Britain's Media Guardian magazine reported the 20-second spot was produced by a London-based advertising duo known as Lee and Dan, who were given 40,000 British pounds, $75,000, and access to the lastest Polo model to do the shoot.
In a statement, Lee and Dan said, "The ad got out accidentally and has spread like wildfire. It wasn't meant for public consumption. We think the spot reflects what people see in the news everyday, and in this instance the car is the hero that protects innocent people from someone with very bad intentions. We're sorry if the ad has caused any offense."
So an advertising duo is somehow given $75k to create the spot (the production values did seem high) by unknown persons... right. Unless this was a competitor looking to just crash the VW name on the web by having nasty fake virals created, something just doesn't add up.
Posted by drunkenbatmanJanuary 31, 2005, at 05:43 AM
Comments (6)
Posted by: Tom Hoeser at January 31, 2005 06:45 AM
Unless this was a competitor looking to just crash the VW name on the web by having nasty fake virals created, something just doesn't add up.
No two guys spend 40,000 pounds just to have fun and no agency would spend that money to sell a client on a spot. This sounds like something VW commissioned but decided against using. It got out anyway because thats what secrets do.
Posted by: Lau Taarnskov at January 31, 2005 08:18 AM
Sounds like the Ford SportKa story all over again.
http://www.snopes.com/photos/commercials/sportka.asp
Posted by: ssp at January 31, 2005 08:59 AM
I'm not a lawyer, so I may get this slightly wrong...
It's true that German laws slightly restrict free speech in comparison to the US. This is mostly with respect to things like denying the holocaust and so on. While in the US you'll just be wrong with statements like that, in Germany you'll be a criminal.
While completely free speech would be better IMO, it's probably easy to understand the reasons for such laws.
Apparently VW is trying to sue the guys who did the spot for one of these reasons ('Volksverhetzung') which explains why the charges are criminal. And, in a twisted way, I guess it could be argued that the spot is made to stir hate against arab people.
I've read (on the web, though, so it may be wrong) that it seems fairly unlikely that VW's strategy will work in court. It pretty much looks like they're trying to use a law in a way it wasn't meant to be used in (and apparently German judges have much more freedom than US judges to go along the spirit of a law rather than the letters.) On the other hand it does seem to work in a PR way, much better than a press release probably, because the hysterical 'blogosphere' seems to jump at everything that's related to companies suing people.
Posted by: Mark at January 31, 2005 11:50 AM
These reason the Flynt parody and satire standard doesn't seem to apply in this case is that, unlike the Falwell piece appearing in Hustler, which was satire obvious to everyone, this commercial is far fron obvious.
VW itself is partly to blame. It isn't at all unreasonable to think that a firm known for its edgy and contemporary marketing would produce this piece for public consumption.
When I first saw it I didn't think it was an offical VW spot, of course. I thought it was funny, in part, because of the tension it created in considering whether or not it was offical - it just isn't dissimilar enough from their ad campaign to enjoy all the protections of parody.
And, clearly it is a parody in its truest sense, the use of another's work as your own in expanding the theme, but it really isn't satirizing anything or trying to be particularly funny. By that I mean, it's not using the medium to convey anything particularly humorous about the content of the commercial qua commercial, its humor seems to be in the medium. That is very different than Flynt and does, I think, materially harm VW.
Posted by: hitdafloor at February 7, 2005 10:09 PM
I think is it fairly clear (reading between the lines of the VW comments)that VW paid for this and then it made it out to the Internet.
The company I work for develops a lot of "funny" videos to be used only for internal events (like sales conferences). if those videos got out, people would probably not like it either.
I can see how that could have happened here.
I guess what you said at the end is exactly what VW is pressing those charges for. The ad looks very real, even I thought it was real, because it was so professionally done. Plus, it contained no indication that it was a parody, not even at the end.
And who spends £75,000 just for a little personal fun? What if someone pretended to be someone from VW, financed the ad and planned to spread it via weblogs throughout the internet (exactly as it happened)?
And as to the criminal/civil thing, yes, the differentiation as well as the terminology can be different in other countries, and that's okay. No need to develop Transatlantic Division theories. ;-)