• by Barbara Lippert , Columnist, July 25, 2024

For the past three days, I’ve had Alicia Keys’ song, “This Girl is on Fire” fired up in my head, nonstop. 

That’s the kind of joy and relief I’ve been feeling since Kamala Harris’s ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket on Sunday night. 

Since then, Harris has come out of the gate in a pitch-perfect way that none of us could have predicted during an election process that has been filled with shocking and unexpected twists and turns. 

I know I’m not alone in feeling that Harris has injected a new sense of vitality and possibility into the air for men, women and everyone’s futures.

Interestingly, a new Porsche commercial, released yesterday, echoes that fired-up sensibility. 

Shot in Mexico, it’s a big and cinematic two-minute spot promoting the Porsche Macan EV, featuring the multi-Grammy winning British/Albanian singer Dua Lipa.

Now, the multi-talented singer/songwriter hyphenate has emerged with another role—senior copywriter/associate creative director. 

As the writer and co-director of the spot (alongside director Clément Durou of the creative duo “We Are From L.A”), as well as the star driver—of both the plot and the all-electric vehicle—her perspective is dead-on. 

What’s more, she’s a cool pick for Porsche. Her spirited persona exudes European “luxury,” but she’s not the usual rich, gray-haired dude in driving shoes that we’d expect.

And really, the fact that it’s not skewed to men is the point. 

Open on a set, with DL looking casual, standing in front of a massive screen, saying, “So wait, what you’re asking me is, how would I write and direct a Porsche ad?”

The concept is a bit flat—we’ve seen it before. But the spot’s energy, music from her song “Training Season” and the production are great. The car looks cool, so it still comes off as refreshingly clever and fun. 

Also, she breaks through her own third wall often, in asides to the “guys” on set. 

As DL spins her own adtale—“Okay, so I’m in the car, driving, obviously…”—we see each action translated to the screen, as she describes the scene, “But it’s night, and it’s misty, and it’s raining, or maybe not”—and the music reverses. 

There’s a lot squeezed into the two minutes, covering many genres and varied vignettes. One of my favorites features Lipa as a runaway bride, dramatic gown and all, who jumps into her car alone and zips away from her wedding, with classic “Just married” cans tied to her back bumper flying. The cans are a funny bit, not the typical ritual car moves. We never forget it’s a Porsche commercial, but she’s both making fun of the usual cliches and fighting against them. 

“Suddenly, I’m being chased” she says, in her delightful British accent, “because you want cool car shots, right? “Right.  

We also head to the race track, “Because,” as she says,” it’s Porsche.” 

There, it’s Lipa vs. Lips, neck in neck at the wheel in dueling black and white cars, in a dramatic chase on the actual track. (She did spend some time driving at the Porsche Experience Center in LA, and seems into it.) 

”Time for a massive finale” she says. “It’s got to be epic!”

And boom. She floors the car in a desert-sort of setting, kicking up dust while hundreds of horses gallop alongside her. It’s a satiric version of an automotive ad formula, but still comes off as big and emotionally powerful. 

(There was a French car commercial that did this in earnest years back, and the spot was a winner at Cannes.)

We even get an elephant dropped in beside the lovely horses, including a white Palomino. 

“You Porsche guys would never do that, right?” she asks. And she’s correct. It’s seamless and seems like her vision. “Oh, and end on the logo, obviously.” 

Perhaps I liked it so much because she plays with the idea of freedom, and is a full partner, and that registers. 

In the late 1990s, as a young critic, I watched a Cadillac ad, promoting its new lower-priced Catera, starring model (and unforgettable Pepsi spokesperson) Cindy Crawford. 

This was written by Detroit ad guys for sure. It started with a male voiceover saying, “Once upon a time, there was a Princess,” something the car guys thought would really appeal to the ladies, I guess, as we saw Crawford approaching the gates of a giant castle. 

The car was positioned to appeal to working women, but I thought this “Princess” approach seemed dead on arrival.

Curiously, Crawford was also a Princess in tip-to toe-leather—tricked out in a low-cut mini-mini dress and over the knee boots—and maybe they thought that part would appeal to men. 

I pointed all of this out in a critique in which I also mentioned the use of “bondage-wear” and “dominatrix” boots as not the best way to reach the target market, career women, buying their own cars and making their own livings.

Cadillac ended up pulling the $2 million spot for being inadvertently offensive and the car only lasted on the market for five years.

It’s sad that it’s taken this long, but at least Porsche makes clear that they value Dua Lipa’s input. 

And as the star of a quasi-ironic ad that she wrote and co-directed, she’s a compelling presence,  who’s allowed to be herself, on and off-camera.

She’s on fire.