W+K Portland continues exploring (creating) the Dodge origin story, with a series of new ads directed by Adrien Brody, promoting the Dodge Dart, Durango, Challenger and Charger.
“First Dodge,” easily the best of the bunch (featured above) tells the story of how the Dodge brothers’ “competitive spirit and engineering prowess” preceded the making of the first car. The old-timey scene instead depicts the “First Dodge” as a different vehicle entirely. While it ostensibly promotes the Dodge Dart, any of the vehicles in the campaign could have been used at the end of the ad with as much (or little) relevance.
Other spots in the campaign are considerably less involved. “Drive By” promotes the Durango’s Beats Audio integration by showing the Dodge brothers cranking the bass and rattling a genteel country club as they drive by. The meta “Discovery” for the Challenger and Charger asks, “Do you know how hard it is to do a commercial with a Dodge and not do a burnout?” while “Morse Code” trolls viewers with a message (flashed with the headlights of a 2015 Dodge Charger) that, according to a YouTube commenter (never the most reliable source, so take that with a grain of salt) translates to, “You just spent five minutes decoding a morse code message from a dodge YouTube description.”