Daihatsu Hijet Ad: How a Cheap Van Outsold a Lamborghini
11.02.2025 - Ads - Brand - Tagline
Insights by Savva Smith
Insights by Savva Smith
The headline that turned seating capacity into seductive power
Why this works:
They hook you with a jarring claim that flips expectations. “Picks up five times more women than a Lamborghini.” No one thinks a boxy Daihatsu van can outshine a Lamborghini in the “babe magnet” category. That disbelief demands a second look.
This is classic “category flipping”:
Wordplay : "Picks up women" as in dating VS "Picks up" in terms of physical transport
The subhead plays into the ridiculousness: “Don’t laugh.”
They know this is a silly proposition - and they lean into it. That makes it charming, not try-hard.
Price Anchoring: “£167,503 change from a Lamborghini.”
They don’t just say it’s affordable. They say, "Here’s exactly how much money you’ll have left over if you don’t buy a supercar." That’s an ultra-specific way of framing value through exaggeration.
The image reinforces the joke. You’ve got this dorky-looking guy surrounded by women clearly having fun in the back of a dinky van. It’s so over-the-top it becomes believable in its own absurd universe.
It takes the trope of cars as status symbols for attracting women and reinterprets it through a dad-joke lens. It's saying: "You want women? Forget flash. Go for function."
It’s ironically aspirational. Because it doesn’t try to be.
They hook you with a jarring claim that flips expectations. “Picks up five times more women than a Lamborghini.” No one thinks a boxy Daihatsu van can outshine a Lamborghini in the “babe magnet” category. That disbelief demands a second look.
This is classic “category flipping”:
- Take the least sexy thing (a van)
- Compare it to the most sexy thing (a Lambo)
- Win the comparison on a totally different dimension (seating capacity = literal “pick-up” power)
Wordplay : "Picks up women" as in dating VS "Picks up" in terms of physical transport
The subhead plays into the ridiculousness: “Don’t laugh.”
They know this is a silly proposition - and they lean into it. That makes it charming, not try-hard.
Price Anchoring: “£167,503 change from a Lamborghini.”
They don’t just say it’s affordable. They say, "Here’s exactly how much money you’ll have left over if you don’t buy a supercar." That’s an ultra-specific way of framing value through exaggeration.
The image reinforces the joke. You’ve got this dorky-looking guy surrounded by women clearly having fun in the back of a dinky van. It’s so over-the-top it becomes believable in its own absurd universe.
It takes the trope of cars as status symbols for attracting women and reinterprets it through a dad-joke lens. It's saying: "You want women? Forget flash. Go for function."
It’s ironically aspirational. Because it doesn’t try to be.
Savva Smith is the only interdisciplinary expert on the market who helps digital entrepreneurs and founders boost buyer throughput and extract more revenue from their existing traffic - using a proprietary system that blends real-time engineering, classic American direct-response psychology, and AI automation. Savva's clients travel from around the world to meet him for private consultations in exclusive locations across Athens and Dubai. He holds degrees in engineering and psychology.
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