Cadillac chose to feature an arrogant white man with questionable values to promote its new electric vehicle. Thankfully, Ford made a much wiser decision. It’s 2014 Ford C-MAX is introduced in the following video by Pashon Murray, founder of Detroit Dirt, a sustainability consultancy and advocacy group in Detroit.
“We’re crazy entrepreneurs trying to make the world better,” Murray establishes.
According to Detroit Free Press, Ford spokeswoman Sara Tatchio described the video as “lighthearted.” She’s correct about the tone of the ad, but the message is pretty serious.
“The C-MAX is sending a message about where we’re going in the future and caring about conserving resources. This is a movement about changing Detroit and practicing sustainability. That’s why they came at me,” Murray said, explaining how Ford’s agency Team Detroit chose her for the spot.
There is much to like here. I especially appreciate Ford saying that there’s nothing wrong with walking to the market to buy locally produced goods. This is the correct position on sustainability—buy a car from us, because you’re going to need it, but walk when you can.
Speaking honestly about transportation and natural resources takes balls when you’re a car company. It also makes mocking the French for their short work weeks and long vacations seem like some serious douchebaggery.
The great English writer Samuel Johnson once declared that, “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” Johnson’s beef wasn’t with patriotism per se, rather the issue of it being coopted for the purposes self-interest. In the preceding several hundred years since he uttered the phrase, proof of Johnson’s quote is still readily seen in many pockets of society. Politicians often appropriate the love of country for a broad range of purposes; from securing smooth passage of legislation, to xenophobic fear mongering. To wit, patriotism often rears its head when any standalone merit is hard to find.
The American car industry has a complicated history with patriotism. Since Detroit industry workers smashing Toyotas in the 70s, the call to buy American over imported cars has been strong.
But this is 2014. The problem with American manufacturers evoking the nebulous notion of patriotism is that not only are a slew of affordable imported alternatives available, consumers have never been better informed. Aside from buying a house, a new car is likely the biggest purchase a consumer will ever make. Can (or should) a car buyer suspend rationality for the love of country? The idea of this is worth examining in light of a couple a couple of TV spots from American carmakers, Wieden + Kennedy’s GlobalHue’s Super Bowl spot for Chrysler, and Rogue’s recent spot for Cadillac.
Chrysler’s spot features America’s most revered living icon, Bob Dylan, expounding on the attributes of other nations against the backdrop of gorgeously shot Americana. The spot finishes with a call to action, “Let Germany brew your beer. Let Switzerland build your watch. Let Asia assemble your phone. But WE will build your car.” Dylan assures us that other countries are adept at plenty of other worthwhile endeavors, but cars are central to the American story. To buy a car from another country is treasonous.
The Cadillac spot is more polarizing. A love letter to unfettered self-reliance, the spot seems to know which way its bread is buttered. Unlike the Chrysler spot, it doesn’t acknowledge but rather demonizes the attitudes of other nations, even taking the well-worn path of French bashing, finishing with the phrase, “N’est-ce pas?” While the YouTube commenters formed two camps, one of the, “How insensitive, egocentric, and repulsive.” The other, “Hey butthurt foreigners in the comments: instead of crying, take notes. This is why our country is the greatest in the world and yours isn’t,” the spot reinforces what American buyers of this car will love the most about themselves.
Both spots evoke patriotism, but the Cadillac spot stays strictly in the visceral, emotional space, whereas Dylan’s Chrysler spot ends with a plea of rationality – it’s ok to buy foreign goods, just not cars.
The problem with this message is that is is patently untrue. By many independent (indeed, American) perspectives, Chryslers are a pretty middling choice. The jury is back in — Edmunds, Cars.com, Consumer Reports, and plenty of others suggest that all things considered, Chryslers aren’t a great buy. Chrysler is essentially asking us to sacrifice our decision-making rigor on the altar of patriotism. That’s a pretty big ask boys.
But by embracing only the emotional hot buttons and appealing to what makes them unique, Cadillac’s spot lovingly depicts those with the wallet and the will to buy the ELR. While controversial, this spot is much more relevant and appealing to the sensibilities of the self-made.
Jimmy Darmody from Boardwalk Empire cautions, “You can’t be half a gangster.” American carmakers would do well to take note. Evoking irrational yet powerful emotions can’t be tempered by a call to rationality. IF a brand feels compelled to evoke love of country (and it’s a big IF), then it needs to go hard or go home.
American exceptionalism is a strange concept to build a car commercial on. Even for Detroit.
It makes me think the Koch brothers are financing this new Cadillac ELR campaign, covertly of course. How else to account for the brazenness of the socio-political speech?
Cadillac and its agency, Rogue (a group culled from three IPG agencies—Hill Holliday, Lowe and Campbell Ewald) want to stand out and this work does stand out. The ad is effective and disturbing, at the same time.
I feel like the brief made it clear: “Let’s NOT be Prius.” The creative team at Rogue took that thinking and delivered the ultimate anti-Prius spot.
Cadillac is clearly not interested in courting white, well-educated liberals from the suburbs. They want the hard-driving set to get behind the wheel of its electric vehicles. The ELR is the anti-Prius and at $75,000, a slightly more affordable alternate to a Tesla.
Craig Bierley, Cadillac’s advertising director, spoke to Ad Age in hopes that he might clear up some questions that people have raised about the spot.
For instance, some people believe the spot is aimed at the richest 1%.
Not so, says Bierley. Rather than millionaires, the spot’s targeted at customers who make around $200,000 a year. They’re consumers with a “little bit of grit under their fingernails” who “pop in and out of luxury” when and how they see fit, he said. “These are people who haven’t been given anything. Every part of success they’ve achieved has been earned through hard work and hustle. . . . One of the ways they reward themselves for their hard work is through the purchase of a luxury car,” he said.
I appreciate this extra bit of clarification. If you inherited money, or got to where you are today through luck, connections, or a state-sponsored education, buy a Tesla.
An American icon is vanishing. Thankfully, a Japanese car company with the help of RPA in Santa Monica, is doing something about it.
Starting at 10 a.m. Pacific time today, Honda will use its Twitter page to conduct an auction hosted by celebrity film critic Leonard Maltin. Proceeds from the auction will benefit Project Drive-In, Honda’s community service campaign to help a handful of drive-in movie theaters make the expensive transition to digital projection.
To participate in today’s auction, bidders can Tweet the title of the item, the bid price and apply the hash tag #DriveInAuction. The highest bid at the close of the auction wins. The auction concludes at 2 p.m. PT.
Alicia Jones, Manager of Honda & Acura Social Marketing says the use of Vine and Twitter to showcase the auction items makes sense because, “We want to leverage a medium where people are already talking about #SaveTheDriveIn.”
Here’s the problem: digital projectors can cost $85,000 plus installation, which most of the remaining 368 American drive-ins cannot afford. Sadly, failure to convert to digital will cause most of these drive-ins to cease operations. Which, as American car drivers and movie lovers we know to be wrong.
To contribute to this cause, visit the campaign’s IndieGoGo page. So far, $35,000 has been raised via this channel, which is $65,000 short of the goal.
Chevrolet Silverado is sweet country music to pickup truck drivers’ ears. Today, the music is all the sweeter with Nashville singer-songrwiter Will Hoge on the job.
Hoge’s song, “Strong” was picked up by the brand and now it’s the centerpiece of their new ad campaign.
The 60-second version of the above ad ran frequently this weekend, during college and pro football games. Word is, future ads from McCann/Commonwealth in Detroit will focus on the features of the Silverado, including its class-leading V-8 fuel economy and towing capability.
Cars guys love specs, while ad guys love emotional bonds.
This time the ad guys won. Here’s a new entry in the campaign:
I love the pacing here, and the copy. With so much action and commotion swirling around us, on TV and in our own family rooms, commercials can help ground ground us, and this one does so in a nice way.
Chevy calls truck drivers to action with “Find New Roads.” Yet the commercial itself is nostalgic. Find new roads like your dad did when you were growing up, it seems to say.
Gassing up your car is not a dramatic moment, but in this new slow-mo spot from Venables Bell & Partners it is. You see, the good citizens of Yourtown don’t want you to damage your Audi by filling it with the wrong gasoline. That would not be right, nor good.
Quick question, is this spot mildly insulting to women? Sure, there’s an enlightened and empowered woman at the center of the spot and she drives an Audi. But the rest of the cast thinks she’s not capable of gassing up at the correct pump.
Digital disruption is more than an annoying ping in your pocket, and it’s not all good. Take the situation facing hundreds of drive-in movie theaters around the nation–if they fail to upgrade their projection equipment to the tune of $75,000 per screen by the end of the year, they will no longer be able to show first-run films.
Clearly, this is a problem in need of a solution and I for one, am pleased to see a progressive-minded brand step-up with an innovative solution.
Project Drive-In, a newly launched national effort sponsored by Honda to save as many drive-ins as possible, is raising community awareness across the nation, and will supply at least five drive-ins with digital projectors.
“Cars and drive-in theaters go hand-in-hand, and it’s our mission to save this decades-old slice of Americana that holds such nostalgia for so many of us,” said Alicia Jones, Manager of Honda & Acura Social Marketing at American Honda Motor Co.
I’m marveling at the perfect fit here. This is precisely what a car company ought to do and Honda is doing it, with help from RPA in Santa Monica.
As part of Honda’s fundraising efforts, there will be an online auction that features tickets to the Los Angeles premiere of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 as well as additional film-related merchandise.
Honda will also launch pop-up drive-ins at Honda dealerships across the country to help raise awareness and build a groundswell of support, featuring a free screening of the first Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs film.
Car advertising account reviews are the stuff of legend — and legendary books.
So maybe I shouldn’t be surprised to read Adweek’s look at Cadillac’s current review. It doesn’t really instill any confidence that a coherent decision will be made.
I could quote at length all the red flags I see in this interview, but you really have to read it for for yourself. A few highlights:
Multiple traditional agencies in a holding company being asked to pitch the account together. And in the case of holding company Publicis, their agency Fallon (the incumbent and recent winner of an Effie for its Cadillac work) being asked to defend the account against other Publicis agencies. Strategy and creative from different pitches with the potential to be mixed and matched, and the client insisting that nothing presented has yet to pass muster, because it’s all “iterative.”
There’s a lot of money, pride, prestige, egos, and jobs at stake. Frankly, I feel for anyone laboring in the lower ranks of agencies involved in this pitch. It may simply come down to the all-important “chemistry check.” And if you want a chemistry check, consider this: The decision-making client interviewed by Adweek has a Twitter account with only 15 tweets — 13 of them aimed at companies whom he feels have given him poor customer service. According to his official bio, he began his career at GM 22 years ago as a “financial analyst.” Which we all know is an ideal qualification to lead a multi-million dollar advertising account review.
Follower counts in social channels don’t mean much, but no matter how many times a social media expert repeats this fundmental bit of advice, numbers continue to dazzle CMOs and others famished for metrics.
Which explains why Land Rover has made a note of a social media milestone, namely its one millionth “Like” on Facebook.
Even if the occasion isn’t actually all that auspicious, the ad is a nice “Thank You” note to Land Rover fans.
One hundred million Internet users watch online video each day. So, how can a brand possibly be heard and seen above the din?
According to Venture Beat, Vimeo has launched a new marketing product called Brand Creative Fund to connect brands and filmmakers, and provide consulting services to brands on how best to create content for Vimeo loyalists.
The first brand taking part in the Fund is Lincoln Motor Co. The first short film funded by Lincoln will become available next Tuesday, April 30. Each following Tuesday, another short film and behind-the-scenes video will launch. Today, four introductory clips about the short films are available online.
“This is a new ad offering that brings brands into the Vimeo experience,” Vimeo CEO Kerry Trainor told VentureBeat. “We’ve always had ads on the site, but we don’t want to do anything disruptive.”
Thankfully, he refrains from calling this initiative Native Advertising.
“We call it Brand Creative Fund because it’s a little different than a media buy in that a brand comes to the table with funding to distribute and create media,” Trainor said.
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