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Volkswagen car bomb hoax

I generally avoid mentioning advertising efforts that are clearly designed for shock value, but Volkswagen's new viral campaign really gets my goat.

The blogosphere is afire with word of a commercial for Volkswagen that features a man getting inside his VW, driving to a cafe, and setting off a car bomb; the driver's plans go awry, however, because the bomb doesn't explode the car, which remains intact.

In posts about the spot, several bloggers have simply mouthed Volkswagen's claims that it has nothing to do with it; the company originally said it was filing criminal charges against the creators but quickly settled for a public apology.

The whole brouhaha strikes me as a transparent (albeit clever) effort by Volkswagen to engage in the guerilla-style viral marketing that's all the rage in corporate boardrooms now. The ad team that created the spot -- Lee Ford and Dan Brooks -- have claimed they have no idea how the commercial got on the internet. But Adland found a dead link named "Volkswagen" on the Ford and Brook's website (the site has since been changed and the link is no longer there).

Ford and Brooks told the Guardian that the spot cost 40,000 pounds but wouldn't say who footed the bill; the spot's director, however, disputed that claim and said it only cost 400 pounds (extremely unlikely given the high production values).

Keep in mind that Ford Motors did a similar campaign last year for its SportKa. One viral spot showed the car squashing a small bird; another had the car's sunroof decapitating a cat. Ford tried to distance itself from the spots but, according to the Guardian, they were made by Ford's advertising agency.

So if Volkswagen did indeed sanction the commercial, it is far from the first megacorp to bank on plausible deniability. And since the internet is increasingly the media of choice for reaching coveted young adult males, you can bet it won't be the last.