Appalling commercial!
May 27th, 2006 Zeid Nasser (Admin)
Outrageous, racist and very strange for an international brand.
Hasn’t anyone seen this before?
It’s a commercial for the Volkswagen Polo, ‘Small But Tough’, which shows an obviously Arab suicide bomber trying to detonate a bomb from inside a Polo….
I am yet to establish if this, indeed, is a genuine VW commercial produced with the approval of the company, and not just the work of an anti-Arab, independant producer, as it’s spreading on the Internet through blogs and has found its way onto MyTube, which doesn’t verify the authenticity of commercials.
Either way, VW must be made aware that this commercial is unacceptable to Arabs.
Surely, such a large German automaker has to consider its brand reputation in a key market like the Middle East.
Prepare to be appalled here.
Entry Filed under: Controversy, International, TV & Film
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6 Comments Add your own
1. Mike | May 28th, 2006 at 11:07 am
Old (2+ years) and independent. VW were talking about suing the team that put it together.
2. Zeid Nasser (Admin) | May 29th, 2006 at 6:14 pm
Thanks for your comment Mike.
A colleague today told me a story about how a couple of producers shot this commercial, showed it to the VW ad agency as a sample of what they could do, but it somehow found it’s way onto the Web.
3. Humeid | May 29th, 2006 at 10:09 pm
It’s a hoax zeid. http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2005/01/vw_suicidebombe.html
4. ohno a'ina | August 30th, 2006 at 11:28 pm
I am trying to understand why this is controversial? There has never been an Arab suicide car bomber? There are no Arab terrorists? Would it be okay if the terrorist was some other ethnicity? This was funny, and anti-terrorist, not anti-Arab. Lighten up.
5. Ad Blog Arabia » Yo&hellip | September 1st, 2006 at 11:04 am
[...] It’s quite a challenge for companies to keep an eye on what some enterprising designers and producers are doing to their brand, like the Volkswagen ‘Small But Tough’-Terrorist TV commercial, which was also an not endorsed bythe client and created controversy. [...]
6. John | January 13th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
The fact that the idiot can’t detonate his bomb makes this an anti terrorist ad. How on earth is it racist? Fact: religious nuts do blow themselves up, it’s merely a reflection of what is happening. Are you saying that to depict an arab in any unfavourable way is racist? Get real!
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