What’s the deal with Lucasfilm whoring out Star Wars assets to brands willy nilly this last year? The first was VW with its Super Bowl ‘Force’ ad launching the new Passat. Then, much less remarkably, Currys & PC World dipped their toes, then Vodafone and now today, VW again with ‘Bark Side’ for the Super Bowl. I must say, I like what VW have done with the property – they’ve put a clever and amusing twist on the use of the characters and haven’t been too literal about the product being promoted – always refreshing when a brand doesn’t try and tell you what to do. But Vodafone’s, Yodafone ad is another example of work with apparently no creative rationale. The party line is ‘you don’t need to be a Jedi to transfer stuff from one phone to another’… so why not get a new phone with us. Really! Where do I sign!? I can only presume the reality was another ‘what rhymes with our brand name’ meeting ala Compare the Market that got them to ‘let’s get Yoda on board’. Yoda, in all his infinite wisdom should know better. And as for allowing the ‘I wonder if he tastes like wasabi’ line, well…
Star Wars is a huge passion centre for millions of people globally – in fact, it’s a religion. It’s therefore extremely dodgy territory to mess with as a brand and looking at the YouTube comments on Vodafone’s page, it’s not gone down well – ‘I hope whoever thought of this advert does not consider themselves a 'creative person'. A terrible idea, poorly executed and nearly as painful to watch as The Phantom Menace. My inner child is dead.’ – well said and you’re certainly not alone! So the next question is, why is Lucasfilm selling out after so many years of being happily closed to this kind of bastardisation. Surely George isn’t going broke!?
Now I understand that marketing a mobile phone network can’t be easy – it’s an intangible product with no sleek lines and shiny paintwork to set to an emotive sound track but let’s face it, T Mobile do it and do it well. Their ‘Life is for Sharing’ position totally articulates what a phone is all about – sharing news – good, bad, interesting or boring, it’s about social enablement and their ads beautifully demonstrate this through memorable, real life, social experiences. In other words, through experiential marketing. Their already classic ‘Dance’ ad in Liverpool St station is an experiential marketing idea, filmed for TV that went viral and became one of the best known advertising campaigns of all time. It’s currently on almost 33 million hits on youtube – the power of a brilliant idea that people can relate to and want to be the first among their friends to say ‘have you seen this’. Who’ll be talking about Yodafone in a positive light?