In this commercial for the Volkswagen Routan mini-van, you can identify with the pain these hippies feel as if you lived your life right alongside theirs in the heady days of the sixties. Reminiscing by looking at old pictures and movies, they long for the days when things were simpler. Or at least more fun and there was a purpose to their lives. When they fought for causes. When they changed the world. And…when they drove the VS Bus.
Even if you weren’t alive circa 1969, you may not understand the deeply iconic status the VW Bus has achieved. It’s this tie to the past and the nod to the vehicle’s importance in the era that makes this commercial work…and fail at the same time. It works because, if you are familiar with the sixties era, the overwrought emotion displayed in the commercial makes perfect sense. If you’re not, the people in this commercial are just a bunch of strange old farts living together as if they were some sort of anachronistic commune.
The choice of music, Let’s Live For Today by the Grass Roots, is perfect. It mixes well with the notion this spot puts forth; memories are important but time goes on. If you don’t move with it, you’ll…end up a sad old person on a porch wishing it was still the sixties. Or something like that.
