Why are car commercials so dumb?

We;re not talking about power in the sense of the engine's power, but power
in the sense of the car making the driver feel powerful, having the ability
to place himself ahead of the herd and to get a thrill at the same time.
This is what I object to. I do not mind a commercial that shows a car's
handling as it's used to avoid an accident for example. But some guy
giggling like a moron and jeering at someone in the right lane in a ...
minivan is it? ... is sending a bad message to some young kid who is likely
going to buy a Volkswagen.

About a commercial that says::

"At Volkswagen, we provide you with the handling necessary to drive safely.
Now please, provide the rest. Drive responsibly."

Maybe it could show fools eating and driving, talking on the phone and
driving and being generally reckless and some cool guy or girl driving his
Volkswagen well, maybe using handling to avoid those other guys. THAT would
be a great commercial.


--
Regards,
Anthony Giorgianni

The return address for this post is fictitious. Please reply by posting back
to the newsgroup.





"Bill the second" > wrote in message
...
>
> > wrote in message
> oups.com...
> > You have some good points. But aren't there more logical and convincing
> > ways to demonstrate a var (i.e the VW) has more power than others? Do
> > they really need a moron to be their spokesperson for their cars plus
> > point?
>
> It wasn't about the var's power but about the var's handling.
>
>

wrote:
> Why do car commercials appeal to the most primitive and nonsensical
> human desires? Case in point is the VW commercial with the idiot
> getting excited about overtaking a car on a curve. I would think only a
> mentally challenged person would derive any pleasure from such a
> commercial. So what's going on here?

I think these dumb ads are just a result of LCD marketing people. The
Dodge truck ads are by far the worst. We all know a car/truck/wagon with
a Hemi will be quick. I would like to see some practical features of the
vehicle advertised instead of the usual 'this car likes winding roads'
bull****. Maybe the auto makers are hoping the majority will find all
the info they need online? I noticed a lot of ads of average looking
cars with great interiors rarely show the inside, which I think is an
overlooked sales edge they are missing out on.

Does anyone remember one of the first Infiniti ads? It was just some
dude walking thru a forest.

On Sun, 6 Feb 2005 wrote:

> > Turn the ****in' thing off, problem solved.
>
> you are right.

I know.

> I cancelled my cable subscription last year

I've never had a cable or satellite subscription. I've sporadically had
*access* to it as housemates or family members opted to waste their money,
but I've never bought or stolen it. I do have a TV set only 'cause I
inherited it from a relative. Until I took on housemates, it was connected
only to a video player. Now it's got an antenna on top and gets 12
channels. Virtually all garbage except some of the CBC News programming. I
scarcely ever watch it, and when commercials come on, I mute the sound and
walk away.

> I am thinking of entirely getting rid of this "non value-added" idiot
> box!

Take you about 2 weeks before you begin to wonder why you wasted so much
time on it in the first place.

I even got a TV-B-Gone for my keychain. One-button mini remote control,
turns off virtually any television set you point it at.

Daniel J. Stern wrote:

>
> I even got a TV-B-Gone for my keychain. One-button mini remote control,
> turns off virtually any television set you point it at.
>

do you have a guess as to range of this gadget? I think I will need one.

> wrote
> Why do car commercials appeal to the most primitive and nonsensical
> human desires?

Sex sells.

"Dave Stone" <n=> wrote in message
...
> I think these dumb ads are just a result of LCD marketing people. The
> Dodge truck ads are by far the worst. We all know a car/truck/wagon with
> a Hemi will be quick. I would like to see some practical features of the
> vehicle advertised instead of the usual 'this car likes winding roads'

Commercials now days are all about selling people an image.

People who have a sense of inferiority will crave things that make them
feel more powerful. The "hemi" engines will feed into the people who think
their vehicle should match their overinflated ego. It used to be
sportscars, now it's SUV's and trucks (I guess sportscars are too European,
and at any rate, most Americans are such crappy drivers they'd be killed
easily in one, I suppose).

Or how about the early SUV commercials where they often had pictures of
forest, wilderness, etc (years ago, they had an SUV commercial with a guy
who grows a beard and walks through the woods or something). Yet the people
who bought SUV's, 90 percent of them, will never drive them off road. IMO,
what they are spiritually feeding off are the good vibes of the
environmentalist movement, "back to nature", etc. Complete bull****, but it
feeds into deep seated needs for people for authenticity in an increasingly
inauthentic world. "I have a real truck/SUV. I can go offroad. Rednecks,
farmers, "real" Americans, drive them. Not like X, he has a Corolla, that's
a city car. Cities are full of minorities, poor people, French-lovers and
politicians- inauthentic people who aren't in touch with "real" America".

wrote:
> Why do car commercials appeal to the most primitive and nonsensical
> human desires? Case in point is the VW commercial with the idiot
> getting excited about overtaking a car on a curve. I would think only a
> mentally challenged person would derive any pleasure from such a
> commercial. So what's going on here?
>

Because the USA is so horribly conserverative they can't stand any
titties or f-words in television advertisments.

Don't ask me why.

--
----------------------
http://www.saab-900.tk
The Saab Tech Resource
----------------------

wrote:
> Why do car commercials appeal to the most primitive and nonsensical
> human desires? Case in point is the VW commercial with the idiot
> getting excited about overtaking a car on a curve. I would think only a
> mentally challenged person would derive any pleasure from such a
> commercial. So what's going on here?
>

Why limit your query to car commercials? Why do commercials show
housewives dancing a jog because their disinfectant floor cleaner works,
or men becoming all giddy over KFC chicken wings, or people acting like
fools over how much debt they can pile on their credit cards?



John

--
To reply, remove "die.spammers" from address


Von Herzen, moge es wieder zu Herzen gehen. --Beethoven

Paul wrote:

> Those who can do, those who can't go to work in marketing and/or
> advertising. Since they assume that the average person is as
> dumb/lame/has no life like them, they write the commercials
> accordingly...

Actually you think you're glib and know what you're talking about, but
you don't have a clue. Permit someone who has worked in advertising and
who has had his campaigns run in the media to explain:

The ideas that the advertising creatives pitch to the client are usually
far far better than those that wind up on the tube. The client usually
shoots them down, and send the agency back to the drawing board. The
second time the agency generally comes back with "safer" work (read:
stupider). This can happen ten, or twenty times. Bear in mind this is
all done at the ad agency's expense. The client does not pay for
rejected work, only the final ad it buys. These hours are generally not
billable. (For contrast, imagine telling your lawyer, "I'm not going to
pay you for the defense work of the last ten months because the judge
rejected your argument and we lost.") A famed advertising man once
said, "Advertising is as good as the client will allow it to be." While
it's true there are some agencies that don't try to offer up good work
first, that will offer any stupid garbage to the client so long as the
client's check doesn't bounce, I happen to know that Arnold
Communication up in Boston, which does the VW work, is not one of them.
They surely know they are not doing their best work right now, but in
this retailing environment (despite what our president keeps saying
about the econony being on the mend and his policies working, the only
reason people are spending is interest rates are low and so they're
charging their future on their plastic cards; they're in for a rude
shock in a couple of years) they are probably just grateful to have a
client like VW. Many big shops have lost their bread-and-butter
accounts in the last four years, and many have had to close because of it.

VW is actually a good client. Your memory may be short, but back in the
1990s it did some absolutely terrific work, "Mr. Roboto" being one of
the funniest and smartest commercials I've ever seen. But as times got
tough after the stock market crash and 9-11, all cleints have gotten
more "retaily" in their outlook, which means they want less creativity
and cleverness and more "hard sell." That generally results in
commercials being "dumber," such as most of the ones you see today, and
even attempts at humor are lame and "dumb" because people are really
nervous in corporate board rooms these days, and there's less tolerance
for experimentation.

The best car commercial I've seen recently is one for the Maxima that
shows a man and woman coming back from what was apparently a fairly hot
date. They're at the front of the woman's house; he notices her Maxima
and says "Is that your car?" He touches it and suddenly a surge of the
excitement of the Maxima shoots through him: he seems himself driving it
at high speed, with her in the passenger seat laughing and having a
wonderful time. Imagines like these flood through his mind until we cut
to her taking his hand off the car. "Not on a first date," she says to
him with the perfect expression on her face. "...But would you like to
come in for some coffee?" That's the first good spot I've seen in a
long time. We'll have to see if it's the start of a trend or just an
abberation.

By the way, Paul, don't lump marketing and advertising together: the two
are like oil and vinnegar; the two camps don't like each other and have
completely different philosophies and outlooks. And they attract
completely different types of people. Most advertising creatives would
rather work in a Starbucks than in marketing.



John

--
To reply, remove "die.spammers" from address


Von Herzen, moge es wieder zu Herzen gehen. --Beethoven

On Sun, 6 Feb 2005, it was written:

> > I even got a TV-B-Gone for my keychain. One-button mini remote
> > control, turns off virtually any television set you point it at.

> do you have a guess as to range of this gadget? I think I will need one.

Clear across the Chinese restaurant where they were playing obnoxious
Mandarin-dubbed Korean soap operas the other day. Right over two rows of
shelves and over the head of the droid at Blockbuster Video last week.
Basically the same range as any other TV remote. www.tvbgone.com is the
site.