Here's a candidate for most mercenary ad of the year—a homemade spot that was among those entered into Chevrolet and MOFILM's Oscars competition. Thankfully, it didn't win.
It opens on a young woman getting ready to say goodbye to her Golden Retriever. It then heart-wrenchingly backtracks through her relationship with the pet, all the way back to her childhood. It is beautifully written and produced, and will make you feel very sad, and make you smile, and then make you angry when you realize Chevy is a dick who has shamelessly manipulated love for a dying dog to get you to buy a car—by slapping the punny "A best friend for life's journey" tagline onto a shot of an Equinox at the end.
The point of the ad seems to be that your Chevy will outlast your dog, or something. Or maybe, like your dog, it will be there through all the times? And eventually the car will die, and you will be sad about that, too? Except you won't really care, because it's a machine, and not a pet, and well-adjusted people don't develop the same attachment to machines as they do to pets?
The ad is steadily gaining steam on YouTube, where it seems to be pretty well loved, though it has its vocal detractors elsewhere. Kudos to Chevy for picking Jude Chun's ad as the winner instead.