Nissan Leaf's Strangely Moving Polar Bear Ad (VIDEO)

Nissan's new ad for the Leaf, its much-anticipated entrance into the electric car field, somehow combines melting ice caps, an electric car, a polar bear and a strangely moving man-and-animal embrace.

The ad has already earned some raves from eco-minded bloggers. Good says the ad's "irreverence is perfectly tuned." Ecorazzi notes that it ends in an "Awww."

BrandChannel notes that the ad was launched on Thursday's National Football League opener, and says the ad takes a tiny bit of political license:

It's interesting, too, that for the ad, Nissan positioned Leaf in a driveway, untethered - not in a garage where it's actually likely to be found each morning, connected by a cord to an electrical outlet, when an owner leaves the house to get into the vehicle for the commute.

WATCH:

Comments

[mrpuddles]

04:20 AM on 11/08/2010

Filmed in and around Vancouver, B.C.

The bear lives in Abbotsford, B.C.

[mirabay]

12:53 AM on 11/06/2010

These commercials are made for the baby boomers who like to feel good about themselves. Their guilt for putting us in this situation..............

[AyeChart]

10:12 PM on 09/14/2010

Cute commercial. Commercials are emotional appeal, mostly having nothing to do with logic or reality.

[madashellvoter]

08:35 PM on 09/14/2010

To think that this animal and many others could be extent in my lifetime, makes me furious!!!!
I hate the KOCH brothers and if you don’t know who they are…google them. Educate yourselves!

[Morgantheaxe]

01:39 AM on 09/15/2010

Yeh not good ppl at all. These two guys are the ultimate in schemers. Always behind the scene lobbying for something awful. Something hurting people or the environment. They are living proof that being rich and being smart are not nec. qualitys that go together.

[BlackbirdHighway]

03:51 PM on 09/14/2010

My electric car costs about $3 to go 100 miles. Half of my electricity comes from my solar panels. You can't do that with gasoline.

I've gone 15,000 miles without ever stopping at a gas station. You have to experience it to understand how great that feels.

[goddess1871]

03:22 PM on 09/14/2010

The plight of polar bears makes me cry. Poor babies.

[pablue]

09:22 AM on 09/14/2010

Touching, but electric cars aren't emission-free. Most electricity is generated by coal-fired plants. I like electric cars, but let's not kid ourselves, and keep pushing for greener electricity generation such as solar, wind, etc., and then driving an electric car really will mean something positive for the environment.

[CrazyEyes]

10:46 AM on 09/14/2010

So you are saying that using electricity already being generated or creating more emissions by using gasoline is equivalent?

[AyeChart]

10:13 PM on 09/14/2010

Yes! It's not free. It isn't "already being generated." Any more than "gasoline is already being pumped," so using more of it is just free clean energy!

Get it? To generate MORE electricity, more coal or oil has to be burned, basically, because lefty greenies blocked nuke plants!

Get it?

[BlackbirdHighway]

03:42 PM on 09/14/2010

We spend a billion dollars a day on imported oil. That's money drained right out of our economy. With electric cars that money stays here, for us to use.

Think about how much clean electric generation we could build with $3.6 Trillion over the next ten years.

[justsayknow]

03:47 PM on 09/14/2010

And building electric vehicles is way more efficient. 12 moving parts compared to thousands.

[VMoe]

07:31 AM on 09/14/2010

I dont think I could drive a car called a "Leaf". Seriously. A really really pansy name,

[justsayknow]

03:16 PM on 09/14/2010

Seriously, this coming from a person named vmoe?

[BlackbirdHighway]

03:52 PM on 09/14/2010

Maybe they'll make one called "Bone Crusher" for you. Or you could have it custom painted with flames and skulls.

[VMoe]

07:30 AM on 09/14/2010

I think its cute but the Coca Cola Christmas Polar Bears still take the cake for me.

[Ron Arnold]

08:39 PM on 09/13/2010

I find it interesting corporations are using social and environmental consciousness to make a buck. It's part of the new marketing. "Buy our _____ - feel good about yourself for doing the right thing!" Bulshit. Ya wanna help the environment? Go join the Amish. Or the Mek.

The even more interesting question is: Why would our species - who are just as much the environment as anything else in the environment - act as anathema to itself? Seriously . . . when you look at the interconnectivity of life - why would the emvironment turn on itself as we seem to be doing?

[justsayknow]

01:24 AM on 09/14/2010

Are you trying to imply that environmental consciousness is somehow wrong? Or that the only way to help the environment is to become Amish/ What a great help you are. We use vehicles. We have non polluting EVs. Now we just need to fast track solar panels everywhere and were on the way to making a huge change for the better.

[yellowdoggie]

06:02 AM on 09/14/2010

You may be too young to remember it, Ron, but corporations have been using our urge to feel better about ourselves in ads for awhile, now. I remember "I'd like to teach the world to sing..." and how Coke wanted us to all love each other while we were holding hands and drinking their products.

As to your other point, if we humans were simply existing and not pouring poisons into the environment and killing off all the other life, there wouldn't be any problem with our existing in the environment. But we are. And we need to stop. The environment "turns on itself" all the time. Look at forest fires. They destroy everything in their path. The smart and lucky critters run away and survive. The plants eventually come back and balance is restored. But the poor critters who are stuck get killed. Perhaps the earth will survive without us and will do much better when we're caught in the path of our own destruction. I'd rather the human race stick around, though.

[Ron Arnold]

07:16 AM on 09/14/2010

I agree with your forest fire analogy. It's the adapatble creatures who make it. (Or the circumstantially fortunate ones.) I'd rather we stick around too. I'm not a Luddite by any stretch of the imagination - but it seems the further we get into the manipulation of matter - the more difficult it is to be in balance with what gave us that matter in the first place. I'm skeptical of global warming - but I'm not skeptical of plastics, petsicides and heavy metals doing serious damage to our 'cradle'. We're either gonna learn to get along - or we ain't, in which case a 'correction' is definitely going to occur.

[Dominic Canterbury]

05:51 PM on 09/13/2010

What's truly remarkable about this ad is how effectively it manipulates otherwise perfectly intelligent people.

Sure it's cute but defies all logic to think that driving a LEAF is actually good for the environment. The LEAF's carbon footprint is still about 70% of an old fashioned car so it's not like that suburban commuter is saving that poor polar bear. He's just killing him slower.

[justsayknow]

06:09 PM on 09/13/2010

Ironic that you say the footprint improves by 30% and then say it doesnt help. It defies logic all right.

[justsayknow]

08:32 PM on 09/13/2010

Its ironic that you say that the carbon footprint is reduced by 30% but its not good for the environment? Its probably way more than that. Talk about defying logic.

[Dmk2032]

03:45 PM on 09/14/2010

Will someone please look up the definition of "ironic?"

[justsayknow]

05:25 PM on 09/13/2010

Electric vehicles and solar panels are the easiest and best way we have to positively impact our overstressed environment in the present. And it pays for itself.

[BitterBosh]

04:34 PM on 09/13/2010

Sorry, but they have yet to produce a fun/exciting electric car. Get back with me when they make one half as awesome as a GT40.

[justsayknow]

04:39 PM on 09/13/2010

Any decent electric will blow away a gt40.

[Ra Mukantagara]

04:57 PM on 09/13/2010

Ah-hun. How far do you think you will get at full power, going 200 miles an hour? (On a race track of course.) I'm all for electric cars, hydrogen cars, windmills, solar power but not ethanol it’s a waste of water and land. My problem with any of this is that none of it can stand on its own without government subsidies. Take a look at what happened in Spain. You cannot have it without using the power of government to force people to give up their money by way of taxation so you can buttress technologies that without it, and as Spain found even with it cannot stand on their own. I’ll go along with all of it when you don’t need to force us to pay for it.

[apeweek]

10:06 PM on 09/13/2010

http://teslamotors.com

[RLmn]

02:46 PM on 09/13/2010

I liked it. It reminded me of the commercial years ago of the Native American brave who viewed the polluted American landscape with a tear rolling down his face. I think that ad had a lot of impact on changing an attitude of an entire generation regarding pollution. Powerful images can sometimes say so much more than words.

[timremple]

02:33 PM on 09/14/2010

Me too! Interesting the degree of buzz around it.

It would seem that it resonates with folks. I suspect that deep down, a whole lot of folks (aside form the ~30% that watch Faux Noise,) have a profound and grave concern about the environment, and what's happening to it, and what that means from them, and their kids, and grand-kids, etc.

Sure, right now, a LOT of us are more focused on trying to survive the Wall Street and Fortune 500 induced collapse of American economy, especially for 98% of the population. (Sure, for the top 2%, or 1%, times are good -- when is it ever going to be a bad time for a billionaire?) We are struggling to survive!

But if I look down the road just a bit more, I see something, in the distance, that looks even more terrifying. Something the corpa-government, and corpracrats (of both parties) don't want to deal with. Something that if it turns out even a fraction of as bad as it could, it won't matter how much damned money you have, when the environment on this planet goes whacked!

Yeah, we've got mega debts to China. Thing about debt is, you at least have the option of saying, "I won't pay it!" Yeah, it would roil markets and conservatives would claim the sky if falling -- because it WOULD adversely impact the fortunes of the Big Banks and billionaires.

But, how the hell do the same with Mother Nature?

[Eagleman]

02:37 PM on 09/13/2010

Interesting Ad.

I wonder what if the Polar beards know about the pollution from the chemicals at the battery manufacturing factories...

[apeweek]

02:43 PM on 09/13/2010

Modern battery chemistries are relatively non-toxic (NIMH and Li-Ion.)

Quote from NEMA:
http://www.nema.org/gov/ehs/committees/drybat/

"Spent consumer lithium batteries are not hazardous wastes because they are neither toxic nor reactive. Consumers routinely dispose of these batteries commingled with other garbage in the municipal solid waste stream. Spent consumer lithium batteries disposed in this manner do not pose environmental or safety hazards. Thus, there is no need to require the collection and recycling of spent consumer lithium batteries for the purposes of environmental protection."

Sadly, the same cannot be said for petroleum products and coolant, all of which are indeed toxic.

[Ra Mukantagara]

03:16 PM on 09/13/2010

I think doctors may have a different opinion about the hazardous nature of lithium. Not to mention the kinds of explosions you can get from a lithium battery. Look up exploding batteries. A small one makes a nice mess. Imagine several large exploding lithium batteries. Lithium batteries, to people who know, are the world’s most dangerous battery. It happens in RC cars and planes all the time. Have fun sitting on all those batteries. People cook nicely but don’t taste as good as polar bear.