Rethinking the Image

Image source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J_r0aYiG3M (Accessed: 18 September 2025).^[1] © Volkswagen

Originally broadcast in 2007, this television advertisement for Volkswagen, the German automotive giant, was the centrepiece of an advertising campaign that aimed to capture the quiet pleasure of driving at night.^[2]

Throughout its 90-second duration, we follow its protagonist along a late-night drive through the deserted streets of Los Angeles.^[3] Glimpses of the driver and his car are interspersed with shots of the buildings, intersections, and bridges that line his route, while a musical score by Cliff Martinez underpins an extract of Dylan Thomas’ 1954 BBC radio drama, Under Milk Wood, narrated by Richard Burton. The music and narration form an atmospheric soundtrack which furthers the advertisement’s contemplative mood.

There is little sign of human activity in this sleeping city, but the mechanisms and structures of modern civilisation remain. Traffic lights cycle through their sequences, fluorescent lights illuminate the interiors of commercial buildings, TV screens flicker with colour in empty rooms, and sprinklers hydrate the cool grass. Familiar spaces take on an unfamiliar, mysterious quality.

As we continue to follow the driver along his route while the soundtrack gradually builds, this sense of mystery grows stronger. A lone woman walks along the pavement, an unusual shadow glides across the front of a building, and an abandoned vehicle is seen engulfed in flames.

The car’s headlights illuminate the buildings and rooms that it passes, and it occasionally appears in reflections and through windows; these subtle interactions between the car and its environment establish a link between the product and the potential enjoyment of late-night driving. Brief exterior shots of the car, along with subtle bursts of diegetic sound as it rushes through tunnels and along highways, serve to reinforce this link.

At certain moments, the deserted city is seen from the driver’s first-person perspective, allowing the viewer to envisage a late-night drive of their own. The clearest shots of the car and its driver come at the end of the advertisement, with its end tag posing the question ‘When was the last time you just went for a drive?’ in Volkswagen’s familiar, Bauhaus-inspired typeface.

From a technical point of view, this advertisement’s most notable achievement is perhaps the fact that, despite its use of non-diegetic music, narration, diegetic sound, and a large variety of imagery, it maintains a calm and thoughtful mood. This is partly due to its relaxed pacing and partly due to the successful synchronisation of its visual and sonic elements.

The subtle breathing sounds at the beginning of its musical score, for example, match so perfectly with the opening shots of the driver waiting at the traffic lights as to be indistinguishable from them, and at certain moments, as Richard Burton’s narration of Under Milk Wood describes a sleeping town, particular details of the passage align almost perfectly with the on-screen imagery.

At the time of its broadcast, this advertisement was complemented by a series of poster and press advertisements that mirrored its urban night-time aesthetic.^[3][2] In one of these images, the car’s headlights are projected onto an empty, unmade bed, echoing a similar scene from the television advertisement, while the corresponding text continues its narrative by proposing the idea of a recreational drive in the early hours of the morning.^[2] An additional element of the campaign was a microsite on which users were able to produce their own version of the television advertisement using unseen footage.^[3]

Volkswagen’s ‘Night Driving’ campaign, and in particular the television advertisement that served as its focal point, is an impressive example of how visual, textual, and sonic elements can be curated to form coherent and compelling narratives.

[1] See [2] for a higher-quality version of this advertisement.

[2] Sam Oliver (no date) VW GTI. Nightdrive. Available at: https://www.hellosamoliver.com/vw-nightdrive (Accessed: 18 September 2025).

[3] Campaign (2009) Volkswagen Golf ‘Night Drive’ by DDB London. Available at: https://www.campaignlive.com/article/volkswagen-golf-night-drive-ddb-london/885694 (Accessed: 18 September 2025).