How to sell a car

With all the attention on Kia Spectra "Boyfriend" post, or more specifically, the combination of the blond girl, the Kia Spectra, a succession of tools/boyfriends, the strums of "Genius of Love," and a dog, made me think about how some car companies truly understand how to attack their Generation X or later constituents. Of course, this only works when the advertising is good. The standout example of this is of course Volkswagen. Their site has a special area dedicated to their advertising, complete with names of the musical artists on their commercials. It'll take a year of great sales to get Kia to do the same, I think. My favorite car commercial campaign of late, though, is BMW's wildly ambitious, possibly ineffective but undeniably gorgeous BMW Films' The Hire series, starring Clive Owen. It's unfair to judge these commercials against others, since they are more exercises in art, rather than explicitly trying to sell the car...they aren't really commercials, I guess, but gifts from BMW to film geeks. My two favorites: Ang Lee's Chosen and Joe Carnahan's Ticker. Thank you, BMW.