Money well spent

Oh, Hyundai. Why didn't you just hire Maria Sharapova, tennis champion?



(Skip ahead to 0:17, since the first part of the video is just some bumper that precedes the ad.)

Salesman: [yammers about features on the car, then says] "Plus, right now you can get $2000 cash back!"
Customer: [sounding utterly unimpressed] "Pretty impressive."

This should have been followed by a massive, cartoonish yawn take. Am I right?

Larry Winget, Best-Selling Author of You're Broke Because You Want to Be, Who Is Creepily Hiding in the Back Seat: "Pretty impressive?"
Customer: "Larry Winget? Best-selling author of You're Broke Because You Want to Be?"

First of all, bullshit. No one outside of the Winget family knows Larry Winget on sight. Second of all, if Larry Winget were famous enough to justify an appearance in this ad, you wouldn't need to mention both his name and the book he's "known" for having written. I also love how the customer still sounds totally underwhelmed. Did they spend too much money getting Larry Winget, Best-Selling Author of You're Broke Because You Want to Be for the ad and not have enough left over to hire an actor who could modulate his voice?

LW, B-SAOYBBYWTB, WICHITBS: "Take the money you'll save and pay down your credit card debt."

I love that this is what passes for sage financial advice. It's not Larry Winget's fault that the American public is so stupid with credit, I guess, but really? "Hey, maybe pay off some of your credit card debt?" Good call, financial guru. Also, if you're that serious about needing to pay off your debt, maybe don't buy a new car, much less a gas-guzzling SUV (17 mpg city, 24 mpg highway). Larry? Maybe? I bet if you asked him when Hyundai wasn't paying him, he'd tell you the same thing.

Customer: "Probably should."
LW, B-SAOYBBYWTB, WICHITBS: "Did he just say probably?"
Customer: "Definitely. [sotto voce] Probably." [flatlines]

God, you are so boring. This is what passes for a joke in this clunker of an ad, by the way.

I kind of feel like if Larry Winget gave financial advice to large corporations, he would take Hyundai to task for wasting their money on a pitchman who is so not famous that he has to be addressed by his full name and what he's (not actually) famous for doing. "Hell, what are you guys thinking? Is my appearance in this ad really any more convincing than any random actor saying the same lines? You could have taken the money you saved by not hiring me and bought a pool table for the company break room to boost morale!"

O Come All Ye Faithful, Come and Buy a Hyundai

Hyundai's "Duh" ads, you may recall from this very site some months ago, suck. They're supremely annoying, curiously vague, and obnoxiously smug. But at least they didn't used to look like this:



Here is how the conversation went when this ad first came on:

Knitwear M. Groundhog: At least they picked secular songs. Oh wait, here comes a lamb. Where's God?
Windier E. Megatons: Maybe God's the car.

I mean, way to go, Hyundai. Take the worst of your own ads - the stupid faux-scat-singing, the awful smugness of your announcer - and then combine that with the worst of Mazda's ads! The choir, the positioning of the car as a religious icon being worshipped... seriously, nice job. Utterly savvy marketing sense. As usual, nothing says Christmas like crass commercialism.

Of course, you'll note that Hyundai pointedly uses only secular songs - other ads I've seen in this series have used "O Tannenbaum" and "Carol of the Bells," neither of which is overtly religious in the way that, say, the otherwise mainstream "Joy to the World" is. "Winter Wonderland" is particularly secular in that it doesn't even mention Christmas by name (nor does the ad itself), and for that matter it's not even set in a specific month; the lyrical happenings could well be taking place in February (ironically, that link calls it a Christmas song several times despite the fact that it's nowhere in the lyrics).

The question becomes this: is it more sacrilegious or less sacrilegious if you use a totally secular Christmas song and then put a traditional representation of Jesus - the lamb - into the middle of your ad? I think it's pretty bad either way. There are only two explanations here. One is that Hyundai didn't know that the lamb is a common representation of Jesus (unlikely); the other is that they actively wanted that association. If they wanted it, are they really trying to suggest that Jesus would want you to buy a Hyundai? Even in the Mazda tradition, that seems awfully blasphemous. So let's give Hyundai the benefit of the doubt; maybe we should be seeing the lamb being brought forward as part of a presentation scene. Perhaps the car is for the lamb - i.e., Jesus.

[Setting: Nazareth, 16 AD]
Balthasar: Happy birthday, Jesus.
Jesus: Oh man, a car! This rules! Thanks, Balthasar, you're the greatest!
Melchior: Hey, uh, Balthasar, can we talk to you for a minute?
Balthasar: What's up, guys?
Caspar: I thought we went over this, dude. You were supposed to get him myrrh, just like I got the frankincense, and Melchior got the gold... same thing we do every year.
Balthasar: Okay, you know what, you guys got the useful gifts. Myrrh? Fucking myrrh? That's like the shittiest gift ever. "Here you go, Jesus, something that's only useful if you want to work in a funeral home." And you guys won't ever let me give him the gold once and say it's from me. So yeah, I saved up and got him a car. He's 16, he's got his license now, whatever!
Melchior: Just... you know, we're gonna seem like cheapskates now.
Caspar: Whatever, man, you get him gold every year! How do you think I feel?
Melchior: You see, Balthasar? Now Caspar's crying. I hope you're feeling really good about yourself.

I hope Hyundai is feeling really good about themselves as well. It's bad enough you're going to insult the intelligence of the viewer - now you're trying to imply that Jesus himself approves of your cars? Next time maybe stick with that first secular impulse and display your Motor Trend award like Mazda did. Oh, I guess you didn't win one. Duh.

A confederacy of duh-nces

There are a lot of smug commercials out there, desperate to get you to switch to their product by insinuating that it's the cool or smart thing to do. Very few of them, however, are quite this in-your-face about the viewer's need to clue in.



The "Big Duh" sales event. Someone actually came up with this name, and someone else - indeed, surely an entire room full of people - agreed that it was a great idea and that Hyundai should get started on insulting car buyers by saying that getting a Hyundai is the "duh" thing to do.

The TV ads aren't nearly as bad as the radio ones I've heard, featuring the "World's Smartest Person," an insufferable prick with a British accent whose three claims to fame are his head for not-terribly-obscure trivia, his overwhelming attitude of superiority, and his belief that buying a Hyundai constitutes a "big duh." Fuck that guy right in the ear.

But in the absence of that, the TV versions are plenty bad. First, there's the painful a cappella replacing every note with "duh," as though it's actually easy to distinguish that from any other a cappella note. Fortunately, we have a smarmy voiceover ready to show up at the 12-second mark.

Some self-satisfied dickbag in a recording booth: "The word 'duh.' As in, it's obvious. It's a no-brainer."

This commercial underestimates the viewing public so much that it thinks we need not one but two synonyms for the word "duh," a word (if you can even call it that) of which anyone over the age of five already knows the definition. The guy even sounds like he's talking down to you as he's saying it. And this is Hyundai, for fuck's sake. I would expect this from, I don't know, that guy in the Lexus ads? That guy is a douche.

Dickbag who might, actually, be Kelsey Grammer now that I think about it: "Like a great deal. On a great car."

In J.D. Power and Associates' Initial Quality Study for 2007, Hyundai rated, across the board, "about average." I'm guessing that among the 25 other manufacturers that rated about as good as or better than Hyundai, there are occasionally other great deals to be had. But hell, what do I know?

Dickbag, in somehow even more dickish fashion than before: "Hit the duh switch. The Hyundai Big Duh Sales Event."

Incidentally, are we going to see some proof that Hyundai's cars actually are great, or that their deals are actually good? Most car commercials are endless parades of terms and legalese, and yet Hyundai really just wants you to remember the supposed "Duh"-ness of their deals. Not what they, you know, actually are. But wait, some might actually be coming:

For some reason, a totally different announcer: "Get up to $2000 cash back on a 2007 Hyundai Tucson V6, rated Best in Class vehicle satisfaction by AutoPacific."

I love the term "cash back" because it strikes me as seriously disingenuous. It's a rebate; all that means in the end is that you're being charged a little less. Why not just say "Save $2,000 on a 2007 Hyundai Tucson?" Because people like the idea of "here's some cash!" Also, it makes your cars sound less cheap if you pretend they cost more and then just turn around and hand the money over. It's win-win!

And just why is the Duh Tabernacle Choir singing the Mission: Impossible theme? The cars in this ad are SUVs and compact SUVs. Am I supposed to think that these reliably average cars are somehow sexy or appealing? Come on, Hyundai, everyone knows your niche. Like, duh.