Electrify America Employs Satire To Educate With “As Seen On EV” Campaign

Sales of EVs in the US are soaring, but the total market share remains slim. So maybe satire can help increase the adoption rate.

Iulian Dnistran

By: Iulian Dnistran

Dec 6, 2022 at 10:16am ET

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Electrify America is known for its nationwide fast charger network, which directly competes with Tesla’s Supercharger network. And while Tesla is known for its zero-advertisement policy, Electrify America – which is part of Volkswagen Group of America (remember Dieselgate?) – is trying to bring some Netflix-style entertainment to potential EV buyers with a new satirical campaign called “As seen on EV.”

With the tagline “electric cars are worth watching,” the campaign has three short videos which outline the main benefits of electric vehicles.

The first video in the series, called “Thrift and frugality,” is inspired by the hit series Bridgerton and puts a BMW iX in the role of Lord Chargington, who “moves quite quickly” and “requires less routine maintenance than other gentlemen.”

The second video is called “Love is electric” and it looks like a preview for a reality show like Love is blind, where a girl falls for a Genesis GV60 that can “DC fast-charge at thousands of chargers nationwide, or overnight in my garage.”

The third video, “Old dog new truck,” sees a cowboy talking to a Ford F-150 Lightning like it’s the son of his previous truck, saying that “your pops was like a brother to me.” The truck opens its front trunk and it’s now part of the family.

To quote another hit streaming show, this campaign is “not great, not terrible.” On the one hand, it’s handing out very little information, especially for potential buyers who already did some research.

On the other hand, it’s trying to address the low market share electric vehicles have in the United States. At just over 5 percent market share, EVs still have a long way to go to become mainstream, although the scales are tipping in their favor as time goes by.

What do you think?

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With over 500,000 EVs registered in the US in the first nine months of 2022, sales have increased 57 percent compared to the same period in 2021. In other words, we’re getting there, but there’s still a long way to go, and maybe this sort of campaign can be a conversation starter and inform buyers that don’t know anything about EVs yet.

What’s your take on Electrify America’s campaign? Let us know in the comments below.

Learn more about Electrify America

Electrify America Introduces Balanced Charging; New Naming Scheme