Porsche’s been stepping up their advertising game lately. Besides the social media channels and digital display ads we’ve become accustom to, we’ve started to see TV commercials, too. In fact, just the other night I remember seeing a commercial for the Macan and thinking “that’s odd, Porsche doesn’t really do TV”. Well, they do now and the spot below is their latest.
According to Porsche, “greatness comes from within. From pitting you against you. Onto the greatest version of you. Through the magic of film, we get to see what would happen if Muhammad Ali stepped in the ring against himself. If Maria Sharapova faced off against herself. And if Magnus Carlsen sat across a board from himself. All to help tell the story of a new 911 being born.”
UPDATE: 4-16-2016 The original video/commercial contained footage of Maria Sharapova. That video was pulled by Porsche. This new video, below, has been edited to remove Sharapova. As you may remember, Porsche has suspended ties with Sharapova ever since her involvement with a possible “doping” scandal.
A Look Behind The Scenes At How They Made The Commercial
Karlk Greenberg, currently a writer at “Marketing Daily” and formerly the Internet advertising technology writer for “Adweek”, recently talked with Marshall Ross, vice chairman and CCO at Porsche’s agency of record Chicago-based Cramer-Krasselt, to discuss how the sport was made. Obviously, Sharapova and Carlsen are the real deal. The images of Muhammad Ali, however are a different story. According to Greenberg’s story, “the two Alis are a hybrid of real actors who did a five-week training camp with Darrell Foster, trainer of Will Smith who played Ali in “Ali,” And a CGI version of Ali’s face, created by The Mill.”
Cramer-Krasselt’s Ross told Greenberg that, it was worth the sweat to train actors to “be” Ali’s body in and out of the ring, since it would have been a much harder job to do a realistic CGI of a bout. “We would have had to do quintuple the amount of work. It is much easier from a lighting standpoint to do it live with real people and a real boxing set.”
Marketing Daily‘s Greenberg goes on to say that besides the spot seen in this post, that we can expect another spot that “plays on the fact that the 911 belongs in the pantheon of universally recognized product designs; like a Coke bottle, one only needs to see its profile to know it’s a 911 Carrera. The spot simply follows the shadow of the car, per Ross. The message of the campaign, he says, is that the only car that a Porsche competes with is the preceding model.”
UPDATE: This “Behind the Scenes” video has been pulled by Porsche.
For the rest of the story, check out the original post over at Marketing Daily.
