A joke: The Nissan Juke Launch Spot

It must be really hard being a young creative in an ad agency, when you're working on a car account. On the one hand you are trying to establish yourself as the next hot shot and build your portfolio, on the other hand there are these annoying people called clients, who have never understood your genius and who demand the same lame car driving around somewhere somehow over and over.

Just try to remember a really great car commercial you've seen in the last ten, five, three years. Not many, right? Because let's be serious here. Most work is interchangeable, and too often just quite boring. A car driving in the mountains, a car driving along the ocean, or a car driving in the city. They all do the same. Take you from A to B.

The Nissan Juke however is different. And it shows. It's an ugly car to begin with, which means we have to make the ad campaign surrounding it somehow cool, and fun, and witty. I am pretty sure the folks at Nissan have never really understood what the ad agency, in this case TBWA\Chiat\Day LA, has sold them on here. Because it is just stupid. The whole commercial is nothing but a joke. An expensive one, when you think that :30 sec like this pile up production cost of half a million dollars easily. Add all your media dollars on top, and you're throwing a lot of money out of the window.

Why is this so bad? Well, this kind of car and its commercial are clearly targeted at young, urban, post-college-graduate kids, like the guy in the commercial - Kowalczyk. There is an entire campaign built around him. So far, so good. But "the intern forgot the donuts for the status meeting"? Seriously? That's "the mission" for Kowalczyk? Who of these young, urban, cool kids wants to be reminded of the misery of corporate life in a cubicle, with boring status meetings in plain ugly conference rooms next to awful office environments like the one shown in this spot?

And Kowalczyk breaking the window of a donut store to get a few, stupid donuts? Is everyone so scared of the boss being p... ed off that the intern forgot the donuts? Or is life in this fictitious office so dull that the donuts are the only highlight of the day? Or perhaps the target group isn't that cool, young kid, but the grey suits in their fifties? Can't be. The crazy stunt driving wouldn't appeal to them. These people buy Buick or Volvo while aspiring to a BMW or a Mercedes. I'm really lost here. If anyone in the industry has sales numbers of this vehicle, please share with me. I would be surprised if this vehicle sells at all.

Advice to Nissan: don't let a kid in his/her mid-twenties go crazy with an idea, unless your entire brand premise is build on that idea (think Axe). Entire Nissan that is. Not just one design accident like the Juke.

And TBWA? Come on. You can do better than this.