Of all the 2011 Super Bowl commercials, none has proven more quite so resonant to quite so many people as Eminem and Chrysler’s paean to the Motor City, “Imported from Detroit”; apparently Edmunds.com’s Chrysler search traffic jumped 328% after the ad. No Super Bowl ad had quite as tall an order as this one, which sought successfully to put the Chrysler 200 in car-buyers’ minds just as the company looks to get the Chrysler Sebring out of it.
The Wall Street Journal gives us a nice history of the ad; apparently the Eminem cameo and the long running time were last-second decisions. A good thing, too—the commercial derives much of its weird strength from its slow build and its surprisingly appropriate Eminem cameo, which situates their use of “Lose Yourself.”
I don’t know that there’s a more impressive metric than this: apparently 839 people requested quotes for the 200 between the ad airing and that midnight. For a car that was either invisible in the market or derided for its ancestry prior to that moment that’s an impressive response, one that could go part of the way toward paying for two minutes of extremely expensive Super Bowl ad time.
Need I remind Chrysler: This opportunity comes once in a lifetime, as a Michigander philosopher’s single once impressed upon my rap-crazy high school class. Hopefully the 200 is a good impression for the new Detroit.