2014 Mitsubishi Outlander “Road Trip” Commercial: On the Beaten Path [The Ad Section]

These are do-or-die days for Mitsubishi Motors North America. Sales have cratered over the last decade from 345,111 in ’02 (admittedly inflated by the disastrous “0-0-0” incentive program) to 57,790 in ’12, and dropping the Galant, Endeavor, and Eclipse didn’t help—even if those models weren’t very good, it’s hard to make money selling next to no products.

Yes, the Evo still has its fans, but it’s also on the way out, and who knows if, when, and with what it will be replaced. Mitsubishi cites its emphasis on making vehicles with “global appeal” for the decline in U.S. sales, but our part of the globe will have to wait until 2015 before we get any meaningful new models.

Meanwhile, Mitsubishi aims to defend its meager 0.4 market share with the 2014 Outlander crossover, its first major product update in two years. To say the firm has a lot riding on the Outlander’s success would be an understatement, which explains why it has reportedly doubled its ad budget to an estimated $170 million. Francine Harsini, Mitsubishi’s director of advertising for North America, told Automotive News that the company is counting on the new campaign to “reinvigorate the entire brand.” “Road Trip” is the commercial tasked with accomplishing that ambitious task.

We open on a family of four in their new Outlander on a rainy night in New York City, neatly dressed and headed someplace they clearly don’t want to go, like dinner at Grandma’s or the opera. On an impulse, Dad decides to bag the plans and hangs a left at the Flatiron building, which normally would take them down Fifth Avenue but on this night takes them out West. It also takes them into daylight and automatically changes their clothes. Then the very same road leads them to where it’s winter, and finally another left-hander brings them to Florida, where they head to the Keys on that bridge that all the car companies love to film from a helicopter.

If “Road Trip” looks, sounds, and feels familiar it’s because it looks, sounds, and feels like a bunch of other car (and tire) commercials we’ve seen before, right down to the computer-generated season-changing backgrounds. The message is that with the Outlander you can break from monotony and explore new places, as generic an SUV promise as ever there was. For a commercial that’s supposed to celebrate Outlander owners’ independent thinking, the first line of the announcer’s copy is laughably incongruous: “These days it seems like everyone’s headed to the same old places to do the same old stuff.” Sounds like he’s talking about the payoff line, the one that Ms. Harsini hopes will sustain her ailing brand until product reinforcements arrive: “Find Your Own Lane.”

• Photos and Info: 2014 Mitsubishi Mirage
• Photos and Info: 2014 Mitsubishi Outlander
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Inexplicably, at a time when Mitsubishi desperately needs to set itself apart, it adopts a slogan that is virtually identical to three of their competitors’ current campaigns: “Find New Roads” (Chevrolet), “Let’s Go Places” (Toyota), and “Go Further” (Ford). It’s also strongly reminiscent of a bunch of former car tag lines: “Find Your Own Road” (Saab), “Drive Your Way” (Hyundai), “Go Beyond” (Land Rover), “Built For the Road Ahead” (Ford again), and even one from Harley-Davidson (“The Road Starts Here. It Never Ends”). Surely, Mitsu could have done better.

There’s an old saying in the ad biz that there is nothing as creative as a big budget. $170 million is a lot of money, so we’re about to see if that’s true.

Award-winning ad man-cum-auto journalist Don Klein knows a good (or bad) car commercial when he sees one; the Ad Section is his space to tell you what he thinks of the latest spots. The ad’s rating is depicted via the shift pattern at the bottom, but everyone has an opinion when it comes to advertising, so hit Backfires below and tell us what you think, too.

Source: CarAndDriver