The New Toyota Auris Hybrid

Above: you might want to click on the image to see it in more detail.

I've been looking at the new ad for the Toyota Auris Hybrid.

Obviously I am not cogniscent with the brief for this campaign, so all my conclusions are subjective.

The ad is double page, full colour, minimal copy. The image captures the moment when a new car has just arrived home. The image is seen from the viewpoint of a neighbour looking out of the house next door (with the subliminal message that your neighbours will look out of their windows in admiration if you buy this car).

The youngish man has just got out of the driving seat and his wife and daughter have come out of the house to greet him (possibly they have rushed out; possibly the daughter has been waiting up past her bedtime since it looks as if she might be in a night-dress).

I like the brave way in which the double page has been used, with only twenty-five per cent of the area showing the product. The rest of the space sets the product in an emotional, cultural and demographic context. Note the arrows formed by the two areas of gravel in the foreground, subtly pointing towards the car and subliminally telling us "look!".

Too perfect to be a photograph, the image looks entirely airbrushed and super realist in style.

The setting is suburbia, a quiet road of absolutely new detached houses, featuring pseudo-Tudor neo-Elizabethan gables and half-timbering (these are people rich enough to afford pastiche).

The family are B or C1 social class, standard British middle-managerials or professionals. I would guess they were C1s more than Bs as the subliminal instruction in the copy is "like nothing else". As and Bs resent being told what to do, but generally C1s and C2s are happy to follow orders (as long as you don't insult them by being too overt).

Look more closely at the figures. The mother and child are so perfect that they are obviously idealised. The woman is at the centre of the image, but I cannot think that the ad is aimed at her. Rather it seems to be aimed at men who buy new second cars for their wives. The man is slightly more indistinct, as if he is allowed to be imperfect (baggy clothes that might be hiding a paunch, perhaps the hint of round shoulders). Subliminally this ad is saying to the man: perfect house, perfect family, perfect car - but you do not need to be perfect yourself to own this lifestyle.

There are two light sources in the image. One comes from the setting sun of a summer evening, creating a roseate glow in the sky and gentle shadows on the houses. The other light comes from the car itself, a preternatural dazzling white light symbolising newness, purity, even holiness (using the word in its correct sense to mean something set apart).

From an art-historical point of view the ad is Claudian in ambition. The figures are in the foreground as if on a stage; the composition leads the eye off into the distance; the colours and mood are romantic etc. It's the print ad equivalent of Claude Lorrain's Landscape with Narcissus and Echo or his Rest on the Flight into Egypt.

Saatchi & Saatchi? http://www.saatchi.co.uk/