In 2008, the star of the Lancia Delta European advertising campaign was the house-arrested Nobel Peace Prize-winning politician Aung San Suu Kyi.
The message of freedom appears in almost every car brand's advertisement in some form as a fundamental message. Owning a car equates to freedom of movement, so it is obviously the most important message for these products.
Placing a specific person at the center of the advertisement, especially a politician, is always risky, as the public perception of that person and their popularity can change at any moment, even from one moment to the next. Nevertheless, a Nobel Peace Prize winner with a British spouse who graduated from Oxford and has worked at the UN may be the safest choice possible.
Aung San Suu Kyi's party won the Myanmar elections in 1990, but the military leadership did not allow her to form a government, so she spent nearly 15 of the 21 years between 1989 and 2010 under house arrest. The politician was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, which she could not accept.
First, let's look at the results produced by the advertisement supporting Aung San Suu Kyi. Then, we will see if we can draw conclusions from 14 years later about whether it is worth creating similar advertisements today.
A cavalcade of Nobel Peace Prize winners
It itself advertising follows a simple choreography, with various Nobel Peace Prize winners getting out of the car accompanied by slow violin music conveying elegant, timeless values. The pleasant middle-aged narrator's voice speaks of a brief, eternal truth, thus the concept follows the principle that less is more, achieving the best effect. Just imagine how this experience would be ruined by even a written technical specification about the car or an APR value at the bottom of the image!
The advertisement awakens us to nothing less than the meaning of life, which is a world where it is worth fighting for a good cause and where good eventually, but always, triumphs. By purchasing the car or supporting the brand, we can also become part of this world.
We have some ancient admiration mixed with attraction towards those who are capable of sacrificing their own lives for a higher cause, an ideal. Visual media recognized this long ago, and here we can think of countless Hollywood film heroes from action movies to sci-fi, including Gone with the Wind.
The footage featured in the TV spot was taken at the Ninth Summit of Nobel Peace Prize winners in Paris. At the event, which was mainly sponsored by Lancia, Polish Lech Walesa, South African Frederik Willem de Klerk, Northern Irish Betty Williams, and Ingrid Betancourt also appeared alongside Mikhail Gorbachev, the last General Secretary of the Soviet Union.
Interestingly, during the filming, the crew had one shot, and we indeed see the personalities arriving at the award ceremony. (Betty Williams, for example, was left out of the 30-second spot as she got out on the other side of the car). Another Nobel Peace Prize invitee missing from the commercial is the main character, Aung San Suu Kyi, who was awarded in 1991 and was under house arrest during the event.
Commercially extremely successful it is a commercial, as the video production cost only 60,000 Euros, and moreover, it was able to be broadcast as a public service announcement in several countries, as well as being aired for free by TV stations in nine European countries, including Italy and Germany, which are the main markets.
Social responsibility through brand repositioning
Nevertheless, the advertisement also faced criticism, as some believed it was unethical to use Aung San Suu Kyi for business purposes while providing her with no direct support. Nevertheless, we can rightly feel that the FIAT group did the most that could be expected from a car manufacturer in terms of social responsibility, as it does not involve direct intervention in the domestic political affairs of other countries, and at that time, Aung San Suu Kyi was considered an enemy by Myanmar's official government. In any case, after Aung San Suu Kyi's release, a representative of Myanmar's new government also thanked the car manufacturer for its significant contribution..
1. This advertisement was, by the way, the first step in the repositioning of the Lancia brand, as from then on Lancia sponsored the Nobel Peace Prize ceremonies for years and made social responsibility its main message.
2. The topic is still relevant.
3. What happened since then? In 2016, Aung San Suu Kyi became the leader of the country, and the previously ruling military regime seemingly retreated into the background. However, in 2017, international public opinion turned against the politician. 4. after she defended the Myanmar military before the international court, which, according to numerous pieces of evidence, committed the most serious human rights violations and genocide against the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya minority in recent decades., 5. In the latest chapter of our story, we find Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest again in 2021, after the military regime seized power in Myanmar through a coup following her repeated electoral victory.
6. Everyone can decide whether our Nobel Peace Prize-winning heroine is truly a hero or has become what she fought against. However, we can still feel the message of the 2009 advertisement as relevant: one must fight for a good cause for many years, and along the way, we will reach heights and depths never seen before before a different, more positive order for society can be established and solidified in the long term.
7. An international higher education manager who has been traveling the world for 15 years, establishing international university relations and promoting Hungarian higher education. He was the head of the International Relations Center at the University of Debrecen and also the international director of the Budapest Metropolitan University. He is currently the head of the International Relations Office at BGE. Marketing is both a profession and a passion for him.
