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The DDB London ad for the latest VW Golf is a spectacular communications achievement. The audacity of the idea, the incredible special effects that deliver a magical execution, topped off with a wonderful reworking of that famous tune. This is jaw-dropping stuff, which has attracted widespread industry praise.

Yet it is a very poor piece of brand communication. Too often in marketing we confuse great advertising with great brand communication. The two are not always the same thing. In marketing, we have to go beyond the visceral, visual and emotional impact of an ad and explore the ultimate impact it has in the service of its master - the brand. 'Singin' in the Rain' fails as brand communication for two key reasons.

First, the stunning execution draws almost all the viewer's attention away from the car, toward the ad. Even if the viewer becomes familiar with the sight of Kelly body-popping down the road after multiple exposures, they still have to sit through 50 seconds of a 60-second ad before they can see the actual car.

While unaided recall scores for the ad will be almost off the chart, it would be interesting to see what proportion of the target market is able to recall the car brand featured; my guess would be fewer than 20%.

Second, despite the tenuous link that both the movie and the Golf are classics that have now been updated, this is an ad that could have been commissioned by many other car brands. One of the great tests for brand communications is whether any other brand could displace your own with the same end result. Only Apple could have run the '1984' campaign; only Tango could have featured the big orange slapping man; only Skoda could have shown potential customers throwing themselves from speeding vehicles to avoid becoming an owner of one of its cars.

Take another great piece of advertising that also failed spectacularly as a piece of brand communication - the Honda Accord 'Cog' ad by Wieden & Kennedy. Despite all the plaudits, 'Cog' is a classic example of where advertising and brand take divergent paths.

Two minutes and many millions of pounds of media showcased a series of component parts leading to the final unveiling of the Honda Accord.

I could easily have reversed the Honda Accord out of the 'Cog' ad and into the 'Singin' in the Rain' ad. Then, I could have parked the Golf at the end of the 'Cog' ad. Both campaigns still work beautifully as advertising films, and, by definition, both therefore fail as brand communication.

Neither 'Singin' in the Rain' nor 'Cog' is detrimental to its brand.

But the key question is whether the eight-figure sums invested in each could have been better spent elsewhere in the service of the brand.

There is always an opportunity cost to any piece of communications and often we overlook it when faced with sexy storyboards and amazing special effects.

Kudos to DDB and Wieden & Kennedy - you make amazing ads. Just one question to the branding teams at VW and Honda: do you know the difference between advertising and brand?

30 SECONDS ON ... SINGIN' IN THE RAIN

- Singin' in the Rain was made in 1952. Aside from the starring role, Gene Kelly also co-directed the film. While shooting its most famous scene, Kelly was suffering from a 103deg fever.

- The set from Singin' in the Rain was carefully recreated for the VW ad at Shepperton Studios by a crew of 22 men, working over a 14-day period.

- Speaking about the idea for the campaign, Martin Loraine, creative director at DDB London, said: 'We looked for things that were icons. We thought about the Golf GTi when it came out. There are not many cars that invent a genre, which is what we thought was the true thing about the GTI, not that it was just a fast car or a nice car, it was an original.'

- One person unhappy with the execution is David Thomson, film critic for the Independent on Sunday who said: 'The nature of a movie is being insidiously mocked and exploited.'