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fischda... I think that's a Lotus... not a Ferrari.
give me a break, a Hyundai! Lexus has a similar ad which is a little more believable but what's with the European backgrounds to sell Asiatic cars, do you suppose they're trying to borrow the
image of quality and class that European cars project. They're forgetting another attribute of European cars, distinctiveness, as in originality!
2001 BMW 330ci/E46, 2008 BMW 335i conv/E93
Smart marketing, seems to me. It is all about projecting an image that sticks in the mind. Doesn't matter if the image is borrowed. In fact, borrowing saves the considerable time and money of creating a new image from scratch.
The Asian car industry was born out of borrowing. So was their electronics industry. Give them credit, they do it well; they took the transistor and showed the rest of the world how to use it cheaply. Are there still any TV companies that build in the US? (Is Curtis-Mathes still around?)
Yup.. it seems that European styling is all the rage and that's why you see car commercials with a "European" flavor to them.
(Disclosure: I am copying from a Web page here, but since I wrote it, I think I can safely say that there aren't any copyright issues to worry about.)
Original is at http://www.dustbury.com/vent/vent257.html
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Product, we are told, is king. The world will beat a path to your door, rather than to the doors of lesser mousetrap makers. Bob Lutz, who was the guiding light during the glory days of the pre-Daimler Chrysler Corporation, is known to believe this sort of thing, and his arrival at General Motors has been greeted with Second Coming-level enthusiasm.
It may even be so. There are few things that General Motors needs right now so much as a line of cars that people will line up to buy without bothering to ask how much the rebates are. For years, GM has been falling back on highly-dubious principles of brand management, figuring that all they had to do was target the advertising correctly, and the targets would duly flock to the dealerships. It didn't take long for the rest of the world to figure out that this strategy was seriously flocked up; by now, even your Aunt Hazel and Uncle Elmer know that underneath it all, a Chevy is a Pontiac is a Buick and used to be an Oldsmobile. Cadillac, once the Standard of the World, has dwindled into a few trim bits here and there.
Bob Lutz, say the pundits, will fix all this; under Lutz, the General will presumably build cars that will not only scare Ford and whoever owns Chrysler this week, but cars that will put the fear of God, or at least of Bob, into the hearts of Toyota and Honda and Volkswagen. It's a tall order, and I'm talking Shaq-style height here, but if anyone can do it, surely Bob Lutz can.
That little word "if" looms awfully large, though. History is full of examples of superior products that died a horrible death in the marketplace. (Two words: "Sony Betamax".) The best-laid plans often are royally screwed along the way. I offer as example the small Texas-based television manufacturer, Curtis Mathes, named for founder George Curtis Mathes, which in the late Seventies had a regional reputation that could fairly be described as colossal; their audacious slogan was "The most expensive television in America, and darn well worth it." Included in that lofty price tag was a prodigious warranty: one year labor, ten years on parts. I bought one of their 19-inch sets in 1981 for a stiff $500. Twenty years later, it has never needed a repair.
The merits of the product, however, couldn't save Curtis Mathes. The rest of the American TV makers moved as far away from Dallas and the rest of the country as possible. Some were swallowed up by international conglomerates; some exist today only as brand names. Curtis Mathes filed for bankruptcy. The company, under new ownership, tried to regroup in the middle 90s under the name "UniView" with a WebTV-like box - before WebTV, even - but nothing came of it. UniView still exists, still working on set-top technology and other neat stuff, but what brings in the money these days is, of all things, television - sets imported from the Pacific Rim and sold at Kmart stores under the Curtis Mathes brand. Obviously the "most expensive" tag won't play in the land of the BlueLight Special.
So I wish Bob Lutz well as he starts whipping General Motors into shape, but I worry that the things he can't control (a soft economy, weird governmental notions, sudden enlightenment at Ford) will wind up overwhelming the things he can. Come to think of it, that sounds like my life.
kirstie_h
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I like the Dodge minivan ad where the guy was pretty "helpful" to pick up strangers because his van is roomy... he finally dumped a bunch of guys for a Swedish (?) group of female students.
The message I get from this is that they have to practically throw money at people to get them to take these cars. Is that really the message they want to portray?
A positive, memorable, feel-good image.
The power of advertising.
VW ad... yup.. he rushed into the wrong church as well...
I saw it a few times a little more than a year ago, and have only seen it once or twice since. Funny ad!
I cannot stand that idiot wanting to buy an Impala after a 5-foot test drive. "My father had one of these!" Sure pal, it's the exact same car 30 years later.
I hope he ends up stuck in a 72-month loan, hopelessly upside down in it, and despising the Chevy piece of garbage.
hee hee!
You noticed the ad and remembered it, and what it was for. 'Nuff said.
That said, I'll say more - the ad gives an aura of muscular, over-sized strength. Like a truck.
The Acura ad works on some level in that that it says, "Buy one of these and you'll love driving it so much you'll want to drive from NYC to Maine for lunch." The Chevy ads seems to suggest I'd turn into Paul Bunyan. Doesn't seem to work. Truth be told, though, I'm also not a member of the Chevy ads' target audience. Don't have a truck, don't need a truck, don't want a truck. Still, the Chevy ads aren't as silly as the "Mayor of Truckville" spots. How lame.
kirstie_h
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well of course I'm partial to gm , but the target audience for trucks are bluie collar workers who want to have the most manly truck on the block, well I think those commercials show that.
Bad: Any ad for a SUV that shows the machine in some wilderness setting where cars--wonderful as they are--just don't belong.
Worst: GM's recent ads suggesting the most patriotic thing we can do after 9-11 is to buy a GM car. At last, someone is asking Americans to make a sacrifice for their country in wartime!
Not too mention the fact the government needs the tax money for a strong economy to fund our war.
It's just a marketing gimmick like "this car will make you sexy" or "this SUV will make you the envy of your neighborhood".
4 young women in the car, the driver, kind of plump wearing glasses and a goofy looking hat complains "He didn't call". The other three women chim in with lines like "He's intimidated by intelligent women.", "He has issues with his mother." etc.
Wanna smack 'em all.
twist
Shame on you, Bunky!
Off to the tennis court. Ta ta.
I don't understand why the car companies waste their money on this silly nonsense. Why don't they tell us something useful about the car? They'd rather waste their money making commercials strait from the fantasy world.