(Bloomberg) —
During the Super Bowl, carmakers tend to rely on star power to tout their offerings. This year, BMW turned to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Salma Hayek for a Zeus-themed spot showing off the battery-powered iX sport utility vehicle. Toyota hired Tommy Lee Jones to market its Tundra pickup, while General Motors enlisted Mike Myers of “Austin Powers” fame to highlight its electric push.
One automaker did things a bit differently. Instead of signing up big names, the Sweden-based and Chinese-backed EV maker Polestar took a few jabs at big-name rivals. Its 30-second spot, “No Compromises,” featured footage of the Polestar 2 fastback and a series of pithy messages describing what the brand isn’t all about. “No dieselgate” and “No conquering Mars” were clearly aimed at Volkswagen and Elon Musk.
While Tesla’s chief executive officer responded with a laugh emoji on Twitter, the ad produced some serious attention for Polestar, which was founded five years ago by Sweden’s Volvo Car and its Chinese owner Geely. The brand saw a 580-times surge in traffic to its dedicated pages on Cars.com after the ad aired, and the Polestar 2 was the platform’s most-visited model during the Super Bowl.
“Prior to the game, Polestar had low visibility on Cars.com,” said Julie Scott, who oversees national sales for the automotive marketplace. “They really took the opportunity to step into a national spotlight.”
This year’s big game featured a record number of electric-car ads in yet another sign that competition in the space is heating up. Auto brands ran four times as many TV ads for EVs in the U.S. last year than they did in either of the previous two years and spent an estimated $248 million on spots, up from $83 million in 2019, according to marketing analytics firm EDO.
Automakers also are spending big on updating their manufacturing bases. Carmakers including GM, VW and Stellantis have announced multibillion-dollar plans to set up EV and battery plants as they try to catch up to Tesla, which is preparing to open its first European factory near Berlin.
The timing of Polestar’s Super Bowl ad is no coincidence. The company plans to go public in a $20 billion reverse merger with a blank-check firm in the first half of this year and wants to grow not just in Europe and Asia, but also in the U.S. Key to that push will be the Polestar 3, an electric SUV the company will assemble at an existing Volvo car plant in Ridgeville, South Carolina. Building that model locally will help with pricing and delivery times, both of which have been issues thus far as Polestar has been importing models from factories in China.
The company has a long way to go to lure more buyers to its brand. It delivered around 29,000 cars globally last year, a fraction relative to Tesla’s more than 936,000. Polestar aims to more than double sales this year to around 65,000 units. A spokesperson declined to give specific targets for the company’s U.S. expansion but did confirm the Super Bowl ad spurred a big increase in visits to Polestar’s website.
Now, it’s up to the company to use that buzz to keep growing sales.
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