The Coolest Promo Piece I’ve Ever Seen

June 1, 2006 – 1:33 pm by Matt Radel
Filed under Cool Stuff, Volkswagen GTI

This killer GTI promo piece was found in Tekmassa’s Euro Tuner Magazine.

Looking at the front of the ad, you see a pimped out ride sporting a horrible purple body kit, blower and giant wing spoiler. It’s covered in decals, each with a statement like “Tasteless”, “Lame”, “Tacky”, and “Ugly”. There’s even a web address of “ulookatme.com” in awful green graffiti under the right headlight.

Upon closer inspection you realize that the front “page” is actually made of transparent plastic, and turning it “unpimps the auto (hence the big headline just above the car)”. That is, it removes all the nasty mods and stickers and leaves you with a lovely, clean candy white GTI.

And the message is clear. At first glance, I didn’t even recognize the GTI covered in all the crap – it really could have passed for a tricked out Honda. It really reinforces the ad campaign, and the crazy German dude and Helga are nowhere in sight. Very cool.

But as neat as the overall message is, my favorite part is in the copy:

Notice anything missing? How about punctuation or spaces? That’s right. THERE ARE NONE. The asterisk at the bottom says (without punctuation or spaces of course) “In the interest of speed this ad has been engineered without hindrances like punctuation or spaces”. How cool is that? I never would have thought of that. I even read the copy a bit faster! And just to top it all off, there’s a groovy little diagram on the back about how to make the VW sign with your hands.