Saturday, May 16, 2015
Nissan's Repulsive New Ad Campaign
I'll ask my readers to pick an appropriate label for Nissan's "let's try to convince people that Nissans are fun to drive by showing slack-jawed morons screaming their fool heads off" campaign. Here are a few taglines that come to mind that are more appropriate than the "Nissan=Excitement" crap the ad men seem to have settled on:
1. If you drive it on a racetrack, even a Nissan can seem fun to drive!
2. Look what we can get attention-starved jackasses to do by promising them a few seconds of face time on TV!
3. Think we can't show this ad 400 times over the space of a single ball game?* Sounds like a challenge, and at Nissan, we love a challenge that doesn't involve building a car you'd really want to drive!
4. Does hearing people yell like drunken hicks make you want to buy a Nissan? Great!
Here's the bottom line for me- if you drive a car equipped with Nascar-approved restraints and other safety features on a race track with no speed limit, it really doesn't matter what kind of car it is, it's going to be a lot more fun than sitting in traffic on the way from picking Suzie up from swim practice. We've already seen ads featuring cars jumping cliffs and skyscrapers and flying down ski slopes and doing all kinds of things that no one will ever actually do with any car once it's driven off the lot. Driving is not fun- that's why every car company is in a race to provide as many electronic distractions designed to help you forget that you are in your car as possible. Driving a Nissan? Even less fun than driving most cars. Because- hey, it's a freaking Nissan. You can't even say the name of the company without yawning.
*No kidding. If you wanted to watch tonight's Orioles-Angels game, you were going to have to listen to this freaking monstrosity of a commercial during Every. Single. Break. Often more than once. Thanks, Nissan, for making me turn off the TV and listen to the game on the radio. XM/Sirius should send you a thank you, too. And MASN? Fire the guy who saved himself time by agreeing to book this ad for HUNDREDS of plays during the game. Please.
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I hate it when any ad gets overplayed during baseball games, and at least one always does. This year, the one bugging me on Indians games is for YellaWood, a wood manufacturer. It has an annoying-as-hell country song with a guy singing in a really extreme "hillbilly" accent, "The suuuuuhnn comes uhhhhhhp and the sun gooooes down, work awaaaay, work awaaaaay." Like nails on a chalkboard to me.
ReplyDeleteBut back to repulsive car ad campaigns...have you seen Chrysler's "The Kings and Queens of America" yet? Oh, it will rub you the wrong way just like it does me. Talk about a campaign designed to persuade rich people they earned every single thing they got by the sweat of their brows so they won't feel guilty about buying themselves a flashy new car. Oh yeah. They are entitled. They EARNED that car. It was sheer meritocracy. Nobody gave them any inherited wealth or pulled any strings or smoothed their path or made things easier for them because they were white or anything. No sirree.