Remember Apple’s popular Mac Vs PC adverts, in which John Hodgman’s haggard PC was constantly bettered by Justin Long’s smug Mac?
After a while, Microsoft -- the firm to which the Get A Mac campaigns were so obviously targeted against -- chose play off Apple’s criticisms and producing the less popular, but cleverly marketed I’m a PC adverts to celebrate the benefits of using its operating system.
Now the automotive world has witnessed the equivalent, with Chevrolet hitting back at Nissan’s Gasoline-Powered Everything ad campaign with a humorous benefit to owning is 2012 Volt plug-in hybrid.
You can always fill up your Volt with gasoline in order to make use of the ‘customer only’ restrooms.
The two, 30 second commercials feature a Volt owner pulling up at a gas station and making a beeline for the facilities but being stopped in his tracks by a curious boy and his father who are confused about why an ‘electric car’ would be pulling up at a gas station.
The driver then proceeds to explain how the Volt is capable of running on gasoline and electricity, adding those all-important figures on how much it costs him to fill up on electricity.
Making fun directly at pure electric cars, the advert ends with the Volt driver being told by the surly gas station clerk that in order to use the restroom he must buy gas first. Attendant and watching father and son are naturally astonished when the Volt driver agrees to fill up his car with gasoline so he can use the facilities.
Unless we’re much mistaken, Chevrolet even managed to use the same actor to play the Volt driver in its commercial as Nissan used. Either that, or it took great pains to hire an identical actor.
2011 Nissan Leaf Ad pokes Fun at
We love the clever way in which Chevrolet’s ad campaign subtly retorts Nissan's previous anti-volt sentiment by embracing this particular bizarre benefit of owning a plug-in hybrid, but we have to ask:
When was the last time you were told you couldn’t use the restroom in a gas-station?
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