The Campaign Cup is our attempt to crown the Greatest Canadian ad of the 21st Century. The quarter-finals are now closed, but this is one of a series of "making of" articles dedicated to the final eight competitors before next week's final four reveal.
First, let’s get something straight: The official name isn’t “Start the Car.” The 2004 spot from Zig is actually called “It’s Not a Mistake.”
But 20 years after it first appeared, its signature phrase has become part of the Canadian vernacular, a euphemism for getting a deal so good, it can only be because somebody made a mistake. Now, let’s get the heck outta here before they realize.
The spot is that rare perfect blend of script writing, (by Andrew Bradley and Allen Mah), music (from Ted Rosnick), and direction (Mark Gilbert), capped off by a wonderfully quirky performance from Montreal-born actor Lisa Horner, who, former Zig partner Elspeth Lynn noted this week, “is even able to walk funny.”
Speaking with Campaign from London, where she is now partner and ECD at the independent agency Unbound, Lynn remembered that the work actually faced the daunting task of following up a popular spot for IKEA created by her former agency, Roche Macauley.
“Over the Hill” showed products obtained at IKEA’s once-a-year sale stacked high on the roof of a Volkswagen Bug, “Whoas!” coming from the passengers as they travelled over hilly roads, before stopped by a low bridge.
“We thought the beautiful simplicity of the old spot was going to be hard to beat,” said Lynn. “But I guess the lesson is that there is always another, maybe better, idea out there. It’s the way our industry is able to progress—that belief you can maybe beat something.”
The starting point for “Star-”, sorry “It’s Not a Mistake”, was that the spot shouldn’t just be about communicating a sale, but should tap into an insight in what Lynn described as an “IKEA way.” The idea is that its prices are too good to be true, which creates something of a moral quandary for customers.
“Do you say something and go back? Or just run off with the goods?” said Lynn. “Hence the payoff at the end: ‘It’s not a mistake.’ Because it was IKEA, it was correct.”
Despite a great script, there were some pains in production. There was a point, said Lynn, where it simply wasn’t coming together. “It was following the script to a ‘T’, but it wasn’t working,” she said.
The general feeling was that it was too slapstick in parts, and that there wasn’t enough tension. They went back to Rosnick with some feedback about the musical cues, something like the theme from Jaws, maybe.
Once they changed the edit of the spot to fit that music, things began falling into place. For Lynn, Horner’s joyous “woohoo” as she and her accomplice make their “getaway” became the key to the whole thing. “Thank God we had that. That became the button,” she said. “We breathed a sigh of relief. It worked.”
Lynn said the Zig team had zero expectation that the spot would end up travelling the world, but it ultimately ran in multiple IKEA markets, including Russia. It has also proven remarkably durable, with multiple generations of Canadians citing the spot and using “start the car” as a way of signalling an urgent need to get away.
“The funniest thing recently was hearing someone comment that she ‘grew up’ with ‘Start the Car.’ That’s when I realized it had run so often, it had become a bit of Canadian culture,” said Lynn. “And we had actually made ourselves and IKEA proud.”
And yes, she said, it really should have been called “Start the Car.”
