Ad Meliora: Mitsubishi
Days Go By:
The Story of Mitsubishi’s “Wake Up & Drive” and “Are You In?” campaigns
By: Nigel Becker
In COVID-induced times of hardship, it’s understandable when companies ponder slashing their advertising budgets. But any business professional who doubts the value of advertising ought to proceed with caution, for a growing body of research indicates that, when done right, investments in advertising can pay off handsomely.
The key, concluded authors of a study published last year on creativity in advertising, is that advertising must be both original and relevant. If these criteria are met, a variety of positive outcomes can be had: ads that successfully incorporate humor and positivity have been linked to customers’ perceptions of “brand value/quality, brand trust, and brand credibility” — not to mention the obvious benefits of creative advertising, like boosted name recognition and sales increases. Creative advertising comes in all shapes and sizes. In the new series Ad Meliora (Latin for “towards better things”), we examine creative ad campaigns which went above & beyond.
It was 1997, and Mitsubishi was in a pickle. The Japanese automaker had for years been making headway in the American market, but by the mid-‘90s, their progress had slowed to a crawl, with annual sales in the US mired just south of 200,000. So, the company did what any self-respecting automaker who possessed the means would do: they decided to pursue a TV ad campaign.
However, they (and their advertising agency, Deutsch LA) had to proceed with caution: they’d been airing TV commercials for years, so more of the same wouldn’t suffice — and, as anyone who’s spent more than five minutes watching TV is acutely aware, car ads can quickly devolve into cliches, bound for mockery and Saturday Night Live parodies (which, it should be noted, might actually not be the worst thing in the world — but that’s another story). As a VP at the agency told the Washington Post in a 2002 write-up, “people hate commercials [...] We wanted to make little pieces of entertainment.”
It just so happened that the world of car commercials was in sore need of entertainment… or at least a new angle. Ad after ad after ad targeted parents or upper-class aspirants, focused on the “wide open road” (or mountains or forests), and showed exceedingly little interest in young consumers. Plenty of the ads were clever or eye-catching, but there was a gaping hole waiting to be filled.
And fill it, Mitsubishi’s ad campaigns did, with a stunningly obvious but curiously underutilized approach: “Show people, especially young people, doing things that drivers and passengers actually do in their cars,” as the Post summed it up. It’s worth bearing in mind that the brand and agency arrived at this proposition in the late ‘90s. Terms like “relatable” and “authentic” were not anywhere near established in the popular lexicon, and the vast majority of advertisers, at least in the automobile realm, seemed to either take teenage and twentysomething customers for granted, or to not want them at all.
Both campaigns were guided by a focus on the young and youthful, niftily summarized by Mitsubishi President Pierre Gagnon in conversation with the Post: “Our cars are for people who think young.” First, in 1998, came the “Wake Up and Drive” campaign, which in one fell swoop astutely targeted young shoppers without turning off the old. In one commercial, the splendid copy reads “You have a family. You have a house. You have a dog. You have a pulse,” the words flashing on the screen in front of a car speeding through suburbia. “You still have your youth. Get out and misspend some of it,” goes another in the series.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7D9dbmaVXc&list=PLfRXXj1QW79ixVF_ZGSbCZqLfpKAMRUYM&index=3
The campaign was aesthetically pleasing, and Mitsubishi’s sales were trending in the proper direction, but the brand truly hit its stride around 2001, when they debuted their “Are You In?” campaign (though retained the “Wake up and drive” tagline). This time around, the emphasis was not so much placed on on-screen copy, but on music and mood-setting, as the ads showed young people laughing, dancing, and above all living in their cars.
Within the collection of ads, there were decidedly different approaches, but they all tied back into that “think young” thesis. In one of the first, two roadtripping buddies quickly discover the utility of cruise control when they encounter a police car. Their hijinks are soundtracked by “Start the Commotion,” a crunchy electronica tune from English duo The Wiseguys, who were so far an unknown commodity in the States. In another ad, a woman performs an impressive pop-and-lock routine from the passenger’s seat of her friend’s Eclipse, as the car passes through the night. English house music trio Dirty Vegas’s masterpiece “Days Go By” accompanies their nighttime excursion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8S8PAmXVxA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao3rJDkyZxE
In yet another, we watch years of a man’s life, from partygoing to courtship to marriage to childbirth and parenthood, pass, all as he drives his car, with French electronica trio Telepopmusik’s “Breathe” playing all the way through. With a single ad, Mitsubishi manages to extract bows from its quiver and land them square in the hearts of young fun-lovers and parents alike. (The fact that the ad is set over several years also hints at its durability, although this point is of course conveyed in a way so as to not alienate younger, “edgy” viewers who might be put off by such a practical detail.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=assA9dDT1Gg
None of the ads served up maudlin voice-overs or grocery list-length litanies of special features; they made sure to disclose the car’s relatively low price (when targeting notoriously indigent young adults, a savvy decision) but the ads definitely sold a lifestyle, and not just any lifestyle, but a decidedly attainable one.
And the commercials resonated with viewers to an astonishing extent — and became pop culture touchstones. Although a few of the ads’ soundtracks (the Barenaked Ladies’ “One Week,” Republica’s “Ready to Go”) were by then years-old hits, many of the others soon found themselves receiving attention in their own right. “Start the Commotion,” “Days Go By,” and “Breathe” all entered the Hot 100 after their appearance in the ads, and the former two cracked the top 40. The “Days Go By” ad was the biggest success by far, burrowing so far into the pop-culture psyche that it inspired affectionate parodies from Jimmy Fallon and Dave Chapelle, facilitated the song’s Top 20 peak on the Hot 100, and perhaps even contributed to the song’s attainment of a Grammy. Every time Dirty Vegas earned a record review or a profile, Mitsubishi was inevitably uttered in the same breath. So shrewdly-produced was the ad campaign that the company even developed a reputation as a sort of tastemaker: Two volumes of Mitsubishi music compilations soon followed.
Uncoincidentally, as noted by the Post, the car brand’s name recognition whizzed up by 36 percent between 1998 and 2001, and the “Days Go By” success story undoubtedly pushed the figure still-higher. The sales figures followed a similar trendline. In 1998, American sales were about 193,000; by 2000, they had topped 300,000, and in 2002, at the height of “Days Go By”-fueled Mitsubishi-mania, they zeroed in on 350,000, claiming over 2% of the market share for the first time. Their growth was also pronounced among a crucial set of drivers: young ones. As noted by the Post shortly after the release of the”Days Go By” clip, over one-third of Mitsubishi owners were under 35; the average owner was just 38.
Granted, as the Post and Mitsubishi both caution, the ads can’t claim full credit for the auspicious turn the company’s sales took; as any student of business knows, an array of factors contribute to a brand’s upticks and downturns. But the sheer outside-the-box nature of the ads (targeting young drivers? Eschewing the usual mountains-and-forests scenery?) coupled with its savvy use of music undoubtedly contributed to Mitsubishi’s good fortune.
Incidentally, that good fortune didn’t long outlast that stretch of the ad campaign. By 2009, in the midst of the Great Recession, their US sales were scarcely above 50,000, their lowest total in almost three decades; Gagnon had noted to the Post that their ad campaign had been designed partly to entice 16- to 20-year-olds who weren’t yet car owners, and although it’s hard to tell whether that farsighted ambition paid off, the flagging sales in subsequent years didn’t appear to support it. More recently, the company’s sales have rebounded, although they’re nowhere near those of the Are You In glory days. Might we recommend a look to the successful past as Mitsubishi plots their next advertising move?