Advertising history repeats itself

Mercedes Benz, 1996

How the person who owns the snowplow company gets to the snowplow company.  So what's the deal with this irrelevant headline? What do we care about what the person who owns a snowplow company drives to work on presumably already plowed streets (he is the owner, after all; he's not coming in at 4 a.m.).

Well, if you have a long memory, you might recall this famous Volkswagon ad from back in the '60s (obviously, the writer of the Mercedes ad did):



(Here's a better transfer, but the announcer's in German:)



Still unanswered:  Is it wise for Mercedes Benz play off a 30-year-old commercial that few non-advertising professionals would probably recall?  And for those who don't remember the commercial, what does the ad say to them?  That the company's snowplows aren't doing their job?  That the average snowplow company owner is rollin' in dough?

File this under "Ads for Award Show Judges."  And sure enough, it was a One Show winner in 1996.

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