I don’t follow NFL but I can always tell when the Superbowl is coming up because the big American brands start flexing their marketing muscle. Today saw Volkswagen launch a trailer for their Superbowl marketing campaign showing a group of dogs barking along to the tune of the march from Star Wars, and it is getting huge attention with over half a million views in the first 24 hours alone. They are using two of the most popular memes on the internet (Dogs and Star Wars), and they are, of course, continuing the success they had with Darth Vader and the Passat advert last year.

Volkswagen are not releasing any more details at this stage, but it’s believed that they will be promoting the revamped Beetle this year during the Superbowl. It’s amazing to see that there are now trailers for commercials well in advance of the game, and when you include the post match activity, the superbowl ad campaigns are now a couple of months long. We’d be very surprised if this wasn’t one of the biggest online video hits of the year.