Last time, we examined a shocking ad recently put out by Jaguar, the luxury car manufacturer. An ad which glorifies the abnormal and urges viewers to “delete ordinary” and “copy nothing.” 

We talked about how this mindset is very dangerous deep down inside, because when you blur the external distinctions between men and women, you subtly reinforce the narrative that there are no real differences between them.

Now contrast this with Volvo. The Swedish luxury car manufacturer recently produced a four-minute advertisement that is worth every second. I never predicted I would actually recommend a car commercial for people to watch, but this one is truly beautiful. Watch it now; it’s worth 4 minutes of your time. Seriously.

Filmed by the legendary cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema (of Interstellar and Oppenheimer fame), this ad tells the story of a father-to-be as he learns that his wife is pregnant, and then starts imagining what life with his new daughter will be like.

The love, the tears, and the joy of it all. This all hangs in the balance, however, when his pregnant wife crosses a street in front of a distracted driver. Watch it yourself to see how it ends, but we’ll just say that this ad does a masterful job of personalizing the safety features of the new Volvo EX90.

The contrast with the Jaguar ad could hardly be more stark. The music is beautiful, emotional, and is produced with real human voices and recognizable instruments. The people are simply normal! 

No outlandish costumes or idiosyncratic hairstyles, just an ordinary (hear that, Jaguar, ordinary) guy and girl who are about to welcome a baby into the ordinary world. They aren’t airbrushed like so many people in so many ads you’ve ever seen. They also aren’t grotesque like Jaguar’s collection of androgynous TeleTubbies. 

They’re just real people like you and me.

Further, there are real emotions in this ad. You can sense the anxious joy of a new father as he daydreams about what life with his daughter will be like. Everything from the innocence of childhood to the trials of adolescence to the joy of finally letting her go. He stays up late to hold her as a crying infant and to argue with her as a rebellious teenager.

He watches her brushing her teeth, learning to play the piano, and traveling the world. The excitement, apprehension, pain, relief, and joy of parenting is all bundled inside that 4-minute ad. 

That’s a far cry from the sterile, stoic nonconformity of the Jaguar crew.

Finally, there is simply real life in that ad. The characters display real emotions because they are living real lives in the real world. The ad sketches a genuine story, and shows how the new Volvo model keeps that story from being unwritten before it even starts. 

The closing scene shows the man and woman cradling their newborn in a hospital room, while a caption highlights the new vehicle: 

“Designed to be the safest Volvo car ever made… for life.” 

Unlike Jaguar’s barren wasteland, the Volvo ad actively promotes and celebrates life.

The YouTube comments only underscore how successfully this ad has hit home. Start scrolling, and you will witness a nearly universal display of gratefulness for this ad.

“Man I’m a 22 year old guy why am I crying over this . . . This ad is made for the people, you can feel it.” (lightly edited)

“This is the greatest vehicle ad ever made. Well done, Volvo. Thanks for doing something wholesome, and not ‘edgy’ (calling you out, Jaguar). Your marketing team deserves a prize for this film.“

“Bravo Volvo. Truly sublime. What a remarkable to feat to capture the entire breadth of human experience—biology, psychology, and spirituality—in a 3:45 mini-docudrama. My allegiance to Jaguar vanished in the moment that beautiful Volvo EX90 came to a stop.“

And although this ad doesn’t have nearly as many YouTube views as Jaguar’s, it does have something the other doesn’t have—30,000 likes.

Now, admittedly, the ad isn’t as pro-family as it should be. 

There technically isn’t even a “family” in the ad—the man and the woman are living together, and are now expecting, but they are not married. (The man does speculate that their daughter might be the reason they do get married in the future, but that is a clear reversal of God’s order.) 

More than that, I don’t even know if I could vouch for the Volvo company’s values overall. Not too many years ago, Volvo produced an advertisement for the XC60 featuring two homosexual men affectionately touching foreheads.

But whether or not Volvo as a company is trying to play to both sides of the culture wars, this one individual ad, considered on its own, shines as a wonderful example of glorifying the traditional. Compared to the disfigurations of family life and structure that are being promoted nowadays, this ad is relatively true to a God-honoring picture of the family.

There is one man and one woman, not two of the same sex, or three, or whatever other vandalized versions are out there by now. The man is with his woman in the hospital as she gives birth to a baby; he’s not driving her to an abortion clinic to “get it taken care of” instead. He even envisions an entire future life of sticking with his family and bringing up his daughter to adulthood, instead of figuring out the quickest way to get out of the picture and get on with his life. 

In other words, compared to what’s now mainstream, this ad is remarkably pro-family.

And on a deeper level, can you see how this ad is the polar opposite of the Jaguar travesty. It actively glorifies the normal. Imperfections aside, it uplifts the picture of an ordinary man-woman-child household (which Jaguar would presumably want to “delete”).

So here’s why Volvo’s advertisement hits home so effectively. Most people aren’t airbrushed, grotesque counterfeits. Sure, we are all sinners, and that sin taints everyone’s thoughts to some extent, but for the most part most of us are normal people, living in God’s normal world, with an innate knowledge of the normal way that He set it up to work. There’s only so much abnormal we can take. 

There’s only so much satisfaction we can get from kicking against the goads.

The man-woman family is normal—it’s how we’re made to function. And when a company finally comes out and caters to that instead of trying to cram counterfeits down people’s throats, it unlocks the normal emotions we were all meant to feel. This is why it appeals to us.

Yet, the beauty of the Volvo ad goes beyond “making us feel the right feelings.” In a nonverbal sense, this ad simply preaches the truth. While the Jaguar ad nonverbally erodes the normal ways we differentiate men and women, Volvo’s ad actively reinforces and glorifies the family structure as God designed it. Because media influences culture so heavily, I think ads like this one are a significant step towards turning cultural winds back in the right direction.

If only more companies would “speak truth in advertising.” It’s not just a matter of being forthright with the ingredients list. 

It’s a matter of glorifying the kind of world which honors God.