{"id":36072,"date":"2011-02-07T07:08:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-07T12:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedetroitbureau.com\/?p=36072"},"modified":"2011-02-07T07:30:33","modified_gmt":"2011-02-07T12:30:33","slug":"chrysler-eminem-generate-big-buzz-with-super-bowl-spot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/2011\/02\/chrysler-eminem-generate-big-buzz-with-super-bowl-spot\/","title":{"rendered":"Chrysler & Eminem Generate Big Buzz With Super Bowl Spot"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Born of Fire...Imported from Detroit. Rapper Eminem's spot for Chrysler is generating plenty of buzz.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There was a game on, last night.\u00a0 Yet, as often happens, Super Bowl becomes for many just a filler for the real battle — between advertisers.\u00a0 As tough as the fight was between Green Bay and Pittsburgh, the real war pitted the eight automakers who spent an estimated $100,000 a second to get their message across.<\/p>\n

While most makers were satisfied with :30 second spots, Chrysler went with a budget-busting 2 minute commercial featuring native son Marshall Mathers, better known to most of the world as rapper Eminem.\u00a0 It was an eye-opening spot that didn\u2019t hide the down-and-dirty side of the beleaguered Motor City \u2013 but it also delivered a surprising message of transformation far different from the \u201cBuy American\u201d paean to patriotism that Detroit makers traditionally have used to cover their flaws.<\/p>\n

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Stay Tuned In!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And in the process, Chrysler and Eminem appear to have the nation buzzing.\u00a0 The commercial is the most-searched item on Google this morning.<\/p>\n

(Miss it? <\/strong><\/em>Click Here<\/span><\/a> to view the commercial.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The spot that ran in the third quarter, as the Packers and Steelers scrambled for control, was appropriately dubbed \u201cBorn of Fire,\u201d and bore a pulsing background track from his song, \u201cLose Yourself,\u201d from the movie, 8 Mile.<\/p>\n

The images of the new Chrysler 200, and even of Eminem, were almost secondary to those of the City of Detroit.\u00a0 There were the smoking factories and the ruined buildings, close-ups of Diego Rivera\u2019s legendary murals, and a choir in the restored Fox Theater.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the Motor City,\u201d said the rapper, climbing the stage and pointing his finger directly into the nation\u2019s face, \u201cAnd this is what we do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just 11 words from Eminem, so perhaps the first reaction was one of confusion, trying to sort the messages out\u2026which may explain why the much-watched USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter ranked the commercial as only 44th of 61 rated sports.\u00a0 It achieved a score of 5.99, reasonable, but nowhere near the 7.95 garnered by the Volkswagen ad featuring a young boy convinced he\u2019s Star Wars\u2019 Darth Vader.\u00a0 And, apparently, Eminem doesn\u2019t stand up to the trained dogs in the top-ranked Budweiser ad, a spot that had an Ad Meter Score of 8.35.<\/p>\n

Yet, within minutes, it seemed like everyone was talking, tweeting and blogging about the Chrysler spot.<\/p>\n

(Is a merged Fiat\/Chrysler moving HQ to the Motor City? <\/strong><\/em>Click Here<\/span><\/a>.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAn inspired commercial,\u201d declared media website MC.com, Posterous.com\u2019s Deborah Edwards-Onero stating, \u201cMy favorite ad for the 2011\u00a0 Super Bowl? Hands down the Chrysler Eminem ad by Wieden+Kennedy.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cThe best of the night,\u201d added SportGrid.com.<\/p>\n

Super Bowl spots, considering their price, are designed to entertain, and Marshall Mathers certainly knows how to do that.\u00a0 But bottom line, they have to sell.\u00a0 But sell what for Chrysler?<\/p>\n

\u201cThis 2-minute long Chrysler ad during the Super Bowl wasn’t so much a promotion for a new model; it was an editorial in defense of a beleaguered Detroit and, perhaps, a withering philosophy of what America is about,\u201d wrote Rick Rojas, of the Los Angeles Times. \u201cChrysler seems to say that Detroit isn’t dead, and maybe the spirit of Americans making things isn’t dead either.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first-ever use, on the Super Bowl, of Diego Rivera\u2019s incredible murals \u2013 which portrayed the gritty job of building cars on the original Ford Rouge assembly line \u2013 was highlighted by the Huffington Post.<\/p>\n

The rap world was quick to weight in.\u00a0 \u201cThe last Eminem ad was strong \u2014 he\u2019s about integrity, working-class grit Detroit and so is whatever car company it was for. I think,\u201d Toure, Music Journalist, tweeted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat Eminem commercial dead ass gave me chills, if I was from Detroit I would of just KG-chest pounded myself,\u201d echoed a tweet from Kazeem Famuyide, Online Editor of Source magazine.<\/p>\n

“Super Bowl advertising is about making a statement and capturing the attention of the audience,” said Olivier Francois, President and CEO, Chrysler Brand and Lead Executive for Marketing<\/a>, Chrysler Group LLC.” ‘Born of Fire’ is designed to generate conversation about the brand and the new 2011 Chrysler 200. The spot reflects where the brand is headed and pays tribute to our industrial roots.”<\/p>\n

Whether the spot will move metal remains unclear, but we could soon be seeing a lot of folks repeating the tagline, \u201cImported from Detroit.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chrysler broke the bank with its 2-minute “Born of Fire” ad on the Super Bowl, starring Eminem. But what precisely was the maker selling? Detroit? Chrysler? Or maybe America itself? There’s plenty of post-game buzz and TheDetroitBureau.com picks it up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36074,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"make":[],"post-state":[],"category_old":[151],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36072"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36072"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=36072"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=36072"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=36072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}