vLane Blog

2009 Car Commercials I Don't Get.

From georgiana, Featured Contributor
Posted on September 8, 2008

The marketing push for the 2009 models is on. What are manufacturers trying to say?

You can tell a lot about the target demographic for a television show by the ads that are shown. Try watching Judge Judy sometime, and you'll see ads for technical school and personal injury attorneys, giving the impression that only the unemployed and injured watch the show. Big sporting events tend to be sponsored by car companies because of their large audiences, so over the course of the Olympics I saw many car commercials, some of which left me confused.

What's the deal with the ads for the 2009 Lincoln MKS? First they have the infamous "Starships don't need keys" ad, which highlights an automatic transmission, the most boring transmission known to man, in a deadly dull grey car. The ad clearly is targeting fans of 'Star Trek', but I simply can't imagine Picard in this vehicle, unless he'd been conked on the head and stuffed in the trunk. Even then I suspect he'd find a way to escape very quickly. Sorry, the starship analogy just doesn't work.

Here's another Lincoln MKS ad which flummoxes me. You see the words "Leather-wrapped cyberspace" at the end of the commercial. I'm as tuned in to the interwebs as the next person, maybe more so since I telecommute, but when I'm driving I'm thinking about driving, where I'm going, traffic patterns, the pretty flowers by the side of the road and a million other things that don't include cyberspace. I have more important questions I'd like answered when I hear about a new car. What kind of MPG does it get? How many does it seat? Do I have room for my feet? Does the car actually go? Maybe it was designed as your own private cyber café. You park it down the street and when your family or roommates are driving you nuts you run out to the car and surf the internet from its leather interior. What do you think?

Finally, I was amused to notice something about the new Chevy "This is my truck" campaign. This commercial is all about how long the trucks last, how many miles you can put on them, how much abuse they can take and, possibly, how they like being used for good deeds. But the entire thing is spoiled for me by these little words shown at the beginning of the ad "results not typical." So now Chevy is like Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers? That's a little weird. It's also annoying because I don't want to hear about atypical results. I want an idea of what's going to happen with me if I buy one of your vehicles. I'd like to know about the average life of your truck so I can compare it to others. Sure, it's nice to hear about what could happen but I'm more interested in what's likely to happen.