Makes you wonder what the other guys were saying, doesn't it?
"A wholly passable automobile manufacturer." - Car and Driver
"Buick has become the Bette Midler of the car industry." - Automobile
"B-minus." - Popular Mechanics
"While everyone else was taking risks and reimagining the automotive landscape, Buick has been making their same slightly above-average cars." - Auto World Magazine
"Yeah, no." - Lowrider
"This just in -- Buick has revolutionized the car world. Move over, Ferrari! Take a seat, BMW! Buick is the new gold standard, and the car company against which all other car companies ever will be judged." - Effusive Hyperbole Monthly
"Not as good as 'GO ZOOM ZOOM!'" - Crazy Mazda Fan Digest
Recently I laid out the formulaic outline of a typical car commercial. Toyota, to their credit, doesn't play that game. I just wish they had blazed a more forgivable path:
Mother: 0% APR financing -
The very first words are car commercial boilerplate. Hey, Toyota? The channel has already been changed.
Mother: - on a new Toyota Camry? Wow!
"Financing... on a... car? Unheard of! So, a dealership owner is willing to let me go into debt to charge more money for his car? Oh, my -- the generosity!"
Mother: And when you factor in the 31/mpg rating... well, we're saving a lot.
Seems like every ad I've blogged about recently falls victim to this obnoxious editorializing. SHOW, don't TELL, folks!
Mother: I guess my point is, what should we do with the extra money?
Donate it back to Toyota -- they need the cash to make non-painful commercials.
Kid 1: I'm likin' hedge funds.
Kid 2: What about... emerging markets?
It feels like the kids here even thought these lines were stupid. What, did somebody copy a couple of words down from the "Money" section of USA Today? "Hey, what's like a financial-y sounding word, like 'bank,' but fancier-sounding?"
Mother: (gasps) What's in that cereal?
Good point. This concept might work for a cereal commercial. Because it sure as hell isn't a car commercial.
Announcer: Toyota. A smart way to keep moving forward.
I guess this tagline ties in with the kids saying smart-sounding things. Sort of. Next time, though, Toyota, can you say something about your car that's at least superficially interesting? This commercial was disjointed and pointless.
P.S. Thanks for the financial advice! I just transferred all of my money into hedge funds. If you don't see me post again, it's because I'm partying down in Belize for the rest of my life. Suckers!!
I don't want to talk exclusively about bad commercials, so I do feel the need to throw in the occasional gem. The tough part about qualifying a commercial as "good" or "effective" is the fact that you have to notice it's good. Technically the best possible ad wouldn't be one where you'd think "Hey, good ad," rather, it would be one where you'd see it, and there wouldn't be time to think about how great the ad was because you'd already be driving to the store.
That said, sometimes the stars align and you get a commercial that you notice, love, and feel sold on something. In this case, it comes from the unlikeliest of places - automobile advertising:
Where's the corny exchange between husband and wife? Where's the full-throated announcer ready with clotted boilerplate about how anti-locking, all-wheel driving and streamlining this Cabrio is? How about the leasing info? And the indecipherable half-jokes, where did those go? This ad is stripped of the templated borefest that plagues the sad majority of car commercials. It's just arresting visuals, a beautiful soundtrack, and a simple, intuitive message ("Who wants to go to a party when driving in this car is so much fun?")
When this ad ran in 2000, everyone benefited. Young people were introduced to Nick Drake, Volkswagen saw its Cabrio product (now called Golf) continue to grow into the world's third best-selling car model, and automobile marketers got to see how it's done.
You don't hammer it home with slogans and taglines, you don't overwhelm with leasing information or yawn-inducing product attributes, and you don't make us cringe with hamfisted humor. You simply concentrate on one message, and you offer it in an engaging, artful way. Remember, marketers, we have brains - let us use them.
They say you need to see an ad three times before you notice the brand. But sometimes a commercial is so bland and so missable that it takes dozens of views before it registers. This is how I feel about car commercials in general - they tend to follow a template bound for obscurity:
Pindrop music Predictable man/woman conversation (optional) Visual of the car doing something moderately cool (e.g. driving along a curvy road) Product information the consumer will ignore (e.g. anti-lock breaks, all-wheel drive) Boilerplate leasing info Tagline
This Mercury ad is a true car commercial's car commercial. It takes no risks, communicates no differentiating information, and takes every precaution not to interest the viewer. But when you really pay attention to it, its true badness shines through:
(Perfectly ignore-able music in the background. According to YouTube, this is "nth Degree" by Morningwood. Haha... wood.)
Man: Excuse me, I-I didn't know Milan came with all-wheel drive.
Poor guy. Here he was, sitting outside at a cafe trying to think up an ice breaker for the hottie that went into the coffee shop. He knew he had to get her attention. What could he possibly say that would pique her interest? "Nice weather we're having"? Played. "Hey, is that cool suspender/vest combo top from Filene's Basement"? Nah, every guy probably asks her that. Wait, what about that sweet Mercury Milan she rode in on. What's a really cool selling feature about it? *checks internets* All-wheel drive! Like, no other car has that. Hot conversation starter, dude!
Woman: Yeah, it's brand-new.
Translation: Why are you asking me about this mid-level car I'm driving.
Man: Wow. It had me just on the looks.
Nailed it, dude!! Now write down her license plate number and track her down. Is this seriously supposed to be flirting? I guess it's a kind of double entendre. But, really?
Voiceover: (Boilerplate selling features that are not unique to any one car.)
Man (looking at mercuryvehicles.com on laptop): It's a great find.
"If we don't say so ourselves!"
Voiceover: (Boring lease information that is not unique to any one car.)
Who leases a Mercury? Also, I am asleep by this point.
Woman: You've gotta put Mercury on your list.
Now I know when they record commercials they have about 10,000 different versions where the actors switch emphasis on different words so they end up with pretty much every possible combination. And they picked this one? Why not emphasize the product name, or "your," or a word that's actually important to the call-to-action? Why emphazise a non-grammatical word?
