Advert Analysis (Part 1 of 3)

Dancing car - Citroen C4 (2005)

Citroen's C4 ad is a short, simple and solider advertisement. The ad lasts only 32 seconds with no narrative and only a single character. It opens up to the Citroen C4 in an empty car park on the roof of a building in the centre of a city. The song Jacques your body starts to play and the car transforms into a robot and dances to the Music for the duration of the advert. It comes to a close by the robot turing back into a car and some graphics show the company's logo and the cars's tagline "Alive with technology". This is read by a voiceover (Man's voice).

Obviously this is not a realistic narrative and is done by CGI. The 3D animation is very effective in the ad as it is well done a relativity new to advertisements. This use of new 3D CGI effects re-enforces the tagline "Alive with technology" as Citroen are using cutting edge technology in both their adverts and cars. Other effects used are simply text and an image overlaid on the video. Other editing would include the voiceover and music. The song "Jacques your body"has a good dance beat and includes little if any singing which makes it perfect for a dance song. 

The camera editing uses a combination of close ups, mid shots and low angel shots. The shots change rapidly so they keep up with the music. The close ups are used to show the detail of the robot modle, the mid shots are so the audience can clearly see the dance moves the robot is preforming. The low angel shots are used to make the robot look more powerful as looking upwards on a object bigger and more powerful. Obviously you're going to want to make your car look better and powerful then the others on the market.

Citroen wanted to show their car was the most technologically advanced car available, that it's packed with gadgets. The robot represents how brilliant the car is on a technological level and the dancing shows the performance of the car. This is needed as the ad dosen't show any of the car's features or it's driving ability, the robot analogy promises high performance.

The advert did very well creating a whole series of robot-car advertisements for Citroen, it racked up 1000's of view on Youtube and the song "Jacques your body" is now recognised as the dancing car song. With this now iconic ad, Citroen continued to create robot-car ads until it lost it's originality. In my opinion the overall success of the advert was dude to it's creativity, use of technology, simplicity and the backing of the public.