A young woman drives down a dark country road, chatting on her phone, when a dog runs in front of her car. She brakes too late, gets out in tears and bends over the motionless animal. Then the dog jumps into the driver's seat and drives off. The clip, titled "Who let her behind the wheel?" (Кто пустил ее за руль?), looked like one more Russian dashcam video. It was in fact a commercial for Subaru, and millions of viewers fell for it.
The Subaru Russia commercial and its twist
The ad was uploaded to YouTube on 23 April 2014 and gathered about 12 million views. Car sites such as AutoGuide picked it up within days and identified the car as a Subaru XV Crosstrek, the compact crossover sold as the XV in many markets. Everything about the opening is designed to look homemade: the fixed windscreen view, the grainy night footage and the sudden, awkward accident.
The joke works because viewers think they know where it is heading. A dog on the road, a distracted driver, a sickening thud: the audience braces for a tragedy. The twist reverses the roles completely, and the "victim" is the one who ends up behind the wheel. Researchers at Harvard's Russia Global project describe it as a classic Russian reversal joke combined with the appeal of dashcam footage, used by a Japanese carmaker to sell cars in Russia.
Why so many Russian drivers use dashcams
The ad parodies a genre that was hugely popular online in the early 2010s: footage from Russian dashboard cameras. Dashcams are close to universal in Russia, where drivers fit them as protection against insurance fraud and police corruption. A 2009 regulation from the Ministry of the Interior explicitly allowed their use, and courts routinely rely on the footage to decide who caused a crash.
That habit had a spectacular side effect. When the Chelyabinsk meteor exploded over the Urals in February 2013, dashcams recorded it from at least a dozen angles, and those clips were the most common videos of the event. By 2014 the dashcam look was instantly recognisable worldwide, which is exactly what made it such a useful disguise for an advert.
Dogs as stars of car advertising
Subaru has often put dogs at the centre of its marketing, and in later years it ran whole series of ads starring dogs, including a 2015 campaign built around the hashtag #MakeADogsDay. The Russian clip stands out because it hides the brand until the very end, so the audience shares the driver's shock before the punchline arrives.
Explore more: a pet film centred on everyday moments; how editing shapes a penguin dance video.
Related reading: A Dog Interrupts a Snowy Break in the Most Awkward Way.
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