Kempt Man of the Hour: Terence Koh

“volkswagen”

05/31/11

Kempt Man of the Hour: Terence Koh

With Memorial Day already receding into our hazy memory, we thought we’d single out one of the better uses of summer whites we’ve seen. Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Terence Koh…

This snap comes from last week’s Volkswagen dinner at the Museum of Modern Art, where the rest of the crowd was clad in wool suits and silk ties. Mr. Koh opted for something both summery and avant garde.

Step one is getting genuinely white pants: none of this cream or off-white business. (Those beat-up bucks are allowed to be a little hazier, but don’t start getting sloppy.) The masterstroke here is the spread club collar, just to remind you he’s a forward thinker.

The result is what the aliens will look like when they land on Southampton.

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10/22/09

Ad Rock

Playing Games

The ad world is still figuring out exactly what to do with the iPhone, but an early test case was unveiled last night. Instead of a print campaign or a TV spot, the campaign for the new Volkswagen GTI is leading off with an iPhone game.

Real Racing GTI is a standard 3D racer—remarkably similar to the unbranded Real Racing, except that winning enters you into a weekly sweepstakes and every car in the game is Volkswagen’s new 2010 GTI. That means you’ll get a firsthand, mobile look at the dashboard, and no matter how you drive, a VW always wins.

As a game, it’s not much to write home about; but as marketing, it’s one of the bolder moves we’ve seen this year. VW drivers are a pretty tech-y bunch to begin with, giving away a car a week will draw a fair number of them to the app, and in the process both the GTI and the iPhone will get a whole lot of converts. Maybe the Android folks should give Vespa a call.

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12/16/08

Ad Rock

Keeping it Surreal

We ran across this highbrow Volkswagen spot from the same dour German ad house that brought you the suicidal calorie. The tagline is “Absurdly low consumption,” but again, we didn’t expect things to get quite this bleak.

This time around, it’s more of an existential bleakness. Gas station attendants leave empty, headless lives while (in the Dalí version) pumpmen cry glass tears into a desert pond. See the nightmarish dreamscape that fuel efficiency has created! SUV ads always seemed to resemble sitcom interstitials, so VW is going the opposite way, creating a world with no cars, people, or even buildings.

Then again, we always love a good Magritte homage.

See their take on Dalí»

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