Volkswagen Routan Ads Tout "German" Engineering

(MoneyWatch)  The current ad campaign for the Volkswagen Routan breaks two simple rules of advertising:

1. Keep it simple. 2. Never make fun of the customer.

The Routan ad campaign features an all-new minivan nobody ever heard of, with a funny-looking name; plus celebrity spokesperson Brooke Shields; plus a cameo appearance by "Das Auto," the celebrity, vintage, talking Volkswagen Bug spokescar who sounds like Prof. Ludwig von Drake; plus the loony notion that VW has "discovered" couples are having babies, just so they can buy a Routan.

Got all that? "But wait, there's more," as my friends at AutoWeek say, in a weekly feature of the same name. (Here's a link to my AutoWeek review of the Routan.)

The babies thing prompts Shields to tell people, "Have babies for love, not German engineering."

But in the TV ads, it becomes apparent ?€" after you've seen it a few times -- that this isn't the case at all. The couples who are supposedly having these babies just so they can buy German engineering really aren't.

So much for Rule No. 1.

As for Rule No. 2, the Volkswagen people can deny that they're making fun of the couples in the ads. Provided you listen closely enough, these characters really aren't having babies so they can buy German engineering. That's just something celebrity spokesperson Brooke Shields is saying. Why, we don't know.

Clearly the whole thing is meant to be ironic. Everybody knows -- including the couples who actually buy minivans -- that minivans are unhip and uncool. But not VW minivans. They're so desirable, people will actually go to the trouble and expense of having a baby, just so they have a good excuse to buy one. Get it?

Sorry, that's way too complicated. And if that's too convoluted to follow, it makes it look as if Brooke Shields is scolding the customers, when she's really not. At least, she shouldn't be. Or something.

Surprisingly, maybe, I don't really object to another real obvious flaw in the ads, which is that the Routan, with all its "German engineering" that's motivating people to have babies (or not), really isn't German, it's more like "German-style."

The Routan is really a Chrysler minivan, with a restyled front and rear end, plus tighter handling and a nicer interior, all behind a nice, big VW badge. But let the buyer beware.

Nor do I object per se to that famous German, or maybe "German-style" sense of humor. It isn't that the joke isn't funny, although I don't think it is. It's that the whole thing is too complicated.

You have to figure, the ideal outcome is for young, relatively affluent, baby-making couples to become aware, probably in this order: that Volkswagen now makes a minivan; it has German engineering; it's not bad-looking for a minivan; and it's called the Routan. If the target audience is sifting all those messages out of these ads, they better start saving up for Harvard, because their babies are going to be geniuses.