Before we get to parsing the very gendered list of possibly female-owned businesses you just rattled off, it’s still not so problematic if VW is depicting male workers to target a specific business segment? And maybe it’s worthwhile considering the context of the publication where these ads ran; was it a professional/industry magazine? Is it possible that there was a separate campaign for non-construction-related small business owners that ran in a small business-oriented or gen pop publication? We just don’t know.

I’m from Canada, and I’ve actually heard of small time contractors and entrepreneurs going out of their way to get their hands on these vans for their immense practicality (for which they were actually designed!).

Unlike in North America where I’ve actually heard real working men complain about how utterly impractical North American made cars are, the European makers seem to have the right idea. I had one especially rugged man tell me that he felt trapped by gas prices, and even more trapped by the fact that he only had giant gas guzzling vehicles to choose from–vehicles that were presumably conceived of to be market at him (Why to the big automakers think that working class men are irrational?…I hear a sociological idea a stirring…).

With respect to the adds, the models chosen hardly suggest masculinity. The only mildly interesting thing to me about these adds is the choice of colours in order to highlight how out of place the tools look, and the fact that the third man looks of African descent–suggesting that the advertisers have an idea of the racial make up of the class they’re trying to market to.

I think the adds are fairly honest and not over the top. And K makes a good point about how it might actually have been more controversial to include women, given widely held societal views on the issue. There are also very very few women contractors–which of course begs explaining, but I’ll hardly fault Volkswagen for that.

These are definitely commercial vehicles to the European eye. Note that all the vehicles pictured are white – in Britain, “white van man” is synonymous with commercial drivers/tradesmen, and not always in a good way. White Van Man is notorious for bad driving (because, after all, it’s not his own precious vehicle, but his boss’s.)

I also find it interesting that there are no women in the ads, but on the other hand, substituting a woman in any of these shots might seem to indicate that women can’t be trusted to choose the right tool for a job, whereas you, manly potential van-buyer, would. And that’s a message probably best avoided.

The ads are excellent.

I did the practice driving for my license on a Ssyangyong Musso, but it wasn’t the most common of cars. Young people with little money to spare tend to use smaller, 3-door cars like the Ford Fiesta, VW Golf, Fiat Panda and the like, middle-aged men go for big Mercedes, Volvos and BMWs.