Deny Americans Avocados And The Revolution Begins

Are you ready to go days, weeks or months with no avocado toast? Are you prepared to eat tortilla chips with no assistance from guacamole? The nightmare scenario above could be here sooner than you think, provided Trump gets his way again. Should the worst happen, and the U.S./Mexican border close, U.S. grocery stores and […]

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“San Francisco” Is Code for “Lunatics”

The Congressional Leadership Fund is a super PAC exclusively dedicated to protecting and strengthening the Republican Majority in the House of Representatives. They’re known for throwing hard sliders. Like so: Will the Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff be able to fend off these hideous attack ads and convince the people of his district to send him […]

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The Scoundrel’s Dilemma: When and How to Evoke Patriotism in Advertising

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.

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Do You Care Enough To Overcome Consumer Indifference?

“Fail harder” is a Wieden+Kennedy maxim. But if failure isn’t your thing, you can take the following advise from Martin Weigel’s, “How to (not) Fail” deck. Weigel is Head of Planning at Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam, and his deck neatly illustrates “the gulf that exists between marketing’s bouts of hubris and the consumer’s reality.”

I particularly enjoy slide 100. “Our task is not nurturing enthusiasm but overcoming indifference.”

Words mean something; yet we too often treat words and their meaning as inventions that can be bent to our will. Weigel argues that “the rhetoric and metaphor of modern marketing – community, relationships, fans, loyalty, love, etc. – fundamentally misunderstands how people really feel and behave towards brands.”

Speaking of misunderstanding behavior, see Slide 24, a quote from Paul Adams, Global Head of Brand Design at Facebook:

Almost every App built for a brand on Facebook has practically no usage…Heavy “immersive experiences are not how people engage and interact with brands. Heavyweight experiences will fail because they don’t map to real life.”

Yet, here we are tasked with deepening customer engagement. There is no running away from the language and paradigms of our day. So what can you do? You can’t call bullshit all day, day after day and remain employed for long. A better plan is to honestly assess the tasks before you, and politely poke holes in them where needed, replacing false metaphors and flimsy thinking as you go. Then, whatever real ideas that remain can breathe.

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