The VW Death Star! Greenpeace Turns a Great Ad on Its Head

Volkswagen had a serious contender for Best Superbowl Ad with its charming "Little Vader" spot. That ad has amassed an astonishing (and historic) 40-million-plus view on YouTube. But like all large manufacturing corporations, VW is far from pure. That's why Greenpeace has locked it in its sights -- and taken Little Darth's story to the next logical place: VW isn't cute -- VW is evil!

But first, the incongruity...
The strangeness of a little kid favoring Darth Vader, possibly the greatest villain of all time, was what made the original VW ad so amusing -- and ensured that it would go miles beyond merely viral.

Small children tend to be terrified of Darth Vader, focusing their affections instead on, you know, R2-D2 and C-3PO or Luke Skywalker or Chewbacca or Han Solo or... well, pretty much everybody except the big guy in the black respirator.

So it's not surprising that Greenpeace took this opening and ran with it, suggesting that VW has gone over to the dark side. The environmental organization has even set up at website -- vwdarkside.com! -- with a parody video and a "Rebel Manifesto" calling for VW to:

1. Support strong CO2 emissions cuts. Despite its green image, Volkswagen is spending millions of Euros every year funding lobby groups who are trying to stop Europe increasing its commitment to greenhouse gas reductions from 20% to 30% by 2020....
2. Support strong fuel efficiency standards. More efficient cars are cheaper to run, use less oil and emit less CO2. Volkswagen has a history of lobbying against the strong European standards that we need to kick our oil addiction...
3. Put your technology where your mouth is. Volkswagen says it wants to be "the most eco-friendly automaker in the world", but only 6% of the cars it sold in 2010 were its most efficient models...

Volkswagen said that it was astounded by criticisms that came from the side of Greenpeace that launched a "global campaign" attacking the car maker's environmental record.

Director Carsten Krebs, of Corporate Communications at Volkswagen, said in an email, "The Volkswagen Group has brought down CO2 emissions of its EU 27 new vehicle fleet from 166 grams (2006) to 144 grams (2010), corresponding to a reduction of more than 13 percent."

But the real lesson here is that when you fiddle with a shared mythology -- and that's what Star Wars is for many, many people -- you run the risk of getting some serious blowback.

Now what?
This might seem like a minor dustup, but Volkswagen does have major global ambitions: it wants to be bigger than General Motors (GM) and bigger than Toyota (TM). Greenpeace has about 40 million YouTube views to go before it dethrones VW. But the "Evil Empire" message has already been pushed out there and is starting to go viral on its own.

All VW can do is say, "Wait, we're not evil!" Which is largely true. But as long as the company's cars have a tailpipe, it will be vulnerable to accusations that no matter how much is does to reduce greenhouse emissions, a certain amount of wicked greenwashing will always be in the picture.

And that's all the Rebel Alliance needs.

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