Audi Spectacle: Audi dangles cars from iconic bridges

The Audi Spectacle on Tower Bridge

Audi has produced a set of adverts showing the Audi rings – containing real Audi cars – beneath iconic bridges.

The picture at the top is one of a set of images (you can see them all in the gallery below) created by the Access Agency, which claims it is a concept for a series of adverts for Audi. Which it is. Sort of.

The premise is that the symbolic rings of Audi are dangled below – or besides – iconic landmarks and contain a real Audi car. They would be dramatically lit, unveiled to a fanfare of fireworks and orchestral music and become a landmark in their own right.

Of course, it’s all rubbish. There is no plan to run such a campaign by Audi. This is viral marketing. The plan is to get column inches (or web page space, whatever the colloquialism for that is) as publishers pick up the story and run it, conveniently being able to pick one of the iconic images – Sydney Harbour Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge, Tower Bridge and Venice – from the thoughtfully provided set which should cover most of Audi’s key markets.

And there is absolutely nothing at all wrong with that. It’s half decent marketing even if the implication that this is under consideration as anything other than a viral marketing campaign is a bit disingenuous.

Trouble is, the visuals made us a bit uncomfortable. And we couldn’t work out why. But then it struck us (and it might just be us) that this reminds us of Nazi propaganda. You know the stuff; big architectural statement buildings festooned with propaganda logos.

It doesn’t help that Auto Union (inevitably) had Nazi connections. And maybe, sixty five years on from when the war ended, this shouldn’t matter any more. But if it made us uncomfortable, we can’t can’t be the only ones.

Can we?