by Byron Hurd
The pilot episode of “The Wire” opens with a scene between Baltimore City homicide detective Jimmy McNulty and a young eyewitness sitting on a stoop, overlooking a murder scene. The victim was shot after running away with the pot from a dice game. The witness explains that the victim, “Snot Boogie,” would come to the game every week and let the pot get thick, then pull a snatch and grab. Normally, the other players would chase him down and kick his ass for trying to make off with the cash, but this week somebody got tired of the routine and shot poor Snot Boogie dead. McNulty is puzzled, and asks the witness why they continued to allow Snot Boogie to play if he always ran off with the money. The witness looks at McNulty and then back at the body, then says, matter-of-factly, “You got to. This is America, man.”
And if Goodby, Silverstein & Partners hadn’t cribbed from David Simon’s series intro, the new Chevy Volt ad probably would have flown completely under my radar. But right there, buried in the middle of the voice-over (and just as deadpan the original), Chevy makes their appeal to all of us. “This is America, man.”
Even at face value, the sheer audacity of the line makes an impression. After all, it’s hardly the first time GM could be accused of pandering to the nationalistic tendencies of some of its core buyers. But when taken in the context of the above story, it’s a far more chilling appeal. The image of GM reaching its hands into the community pot and making a run for it, only to be beaten up, run off, and then allowed to return… well, if you’re still not getting it, you’re never going to.
Whether the reference was intentional or not, it’s not much of a stretch to say GM’s advertising has been asking for second chances. From direct appeals from their executives to glimpses of humility in their product advertising, it’s clear that the GM marketing balloon has been relieved of much of its hot air.
That’s to be expected when you consider that, just years ago, GM was still the biggest manufacturer with the biggest products and the biggest, nastiest, middle-finger-to-the-hippie-governmentiest ego you’d find in the American auto industry. I can’t imagine what it feels like to be bailed out by the people you call some variation of “weenies” on a daily basis. They went from “Too big to fail” to “Government Motors” faster than they could blink, and a change like that requires a shake-up in corporate culture that probably has to be seen to be believed.
What I see here is an admission and an appeal. GM is telling us, yes, we know we screwed up. We know you pulled us back from the brink of who-knows-what and have put us in a position to thrive (and with the expectation that we do so). We know you let us off easy. We know we could have ended up like Snot Boogie. Please, just give us the opportunity to make it right and we promise we won’t reach in there again.
So, regardless of how you may feel about the “Chevy Runs Deep” tagline and the general tone of the commercials they’ve debuted this week, you can take solace in the fact that somewhere, somebody in Chevy’s ad agency might have a grasp on the bigger picture. And maybe there’s a little bit more to this push than superficial flag-waving and heritage appeal.
After all, this is America. You gotta let GM play.
This is America. You have been suckered into believing that a branding and marketing exercise has anything to do with the reality of a company. That's more American than anything GM has done.
GM is not a person. It is not a friendly face. It is not a dog that gets to come out to play. It is a multinational corporation larger than your imagining, which retains marketing people who have absolutely nothing to do with the people who make its decisions or products. The entire image is a fiction created for human beings, who are not able to grasp the vast workings of that whole. We like to simplify it into "friend or foe" and a set of colors and a feeling of belonging. That's all false.
The person in the ad agency may or may not get what GM is about, and they may or may not care. Letting the ads say to you anything other than "we will say whatever we can to help you want to buy our products" is falling victim to the illusion, like the guys who keep letting the thief in on their game. Americans are exposed to more advertising than any creature on Earth; I am stunned at the lack of perspective in dealing with that advertising. It's almost like the more we watch, the less critical we get.
Oh, and in my experience on the street, that thief would end up in the gutter or dead before he ended up at another game. That's the real America for a lot of people.
The Snot Boogie story is actually based on true events, for what it's worth. Simon was told that anecdote when researching "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets."
If you'd like to discuss the merits of the "Chevy Runs Deep" tagline and the rest of their new campaign, there are about a thousand stories out there criticizing it. I encourage you to check them out.
I agree that there are a thousand other stories out there bantering around a stupid marketing tagline. That's because most so-called auto journalists are simply regurgitators or recommentators on whatever cram is shlocked out to them by the PR departments at the car companies. The only reason I commented about it here was that SSL has specifically taken those other PR-commenting "journalists" to task for their lack of insight.
It's not your job to service my needs. But I really like SSL. I like your approach. I like the fact that you care about the machines more than the marketing. So instead of being *just* a whiner, I'll offer up a few thoughts for articles that I think might be a bit more interesting than the usual regurgitate/comment cycle. Each of these article ideas might be a bit geeky, but they are actually about cars, and they are actually about the issues that affect our cars that *no one* in the entire automotive media is even discussing:
1. What are the new safety requirements on cars? Why are they adding weight? How are designers handling those new requirements while trying to maintain the driving experience? This could involve some great interviews with designers, and some great insight. It could be a reference article for all those bench-racing debates across the internet about new cars vs. old.
2. What challenges are the designers facing when trying to design cars we like to buy and look at versus what they need to design to get through production constraints? Everyone likes to talk about what they like or don't like. We hear almost nothing about *why* cars need to look the way they do. Again, my guess is that such an article, correctly written, would get referenced across the 'net.
3. What suspension geometry tricks and/or differences exist between different sports cars. What makes them handle the way they do? Where is the roll center on a Lexus LS460 vs. a 7 Series? How does that affect handling? Again, a billion words are used to describe these cars, but no one seems to want to spend five minutes getting into the why. Personally, I don't have access to car company engineers, so I don't get to ask them this stuff – but I would love to read about it, and I'll bet other people would too.
4. Every car blog and magazine on earth parroted McLaren's revelation about the 2.1 grams saved by it's logo embossing, even though it's a ridiculous detail compared to all the real engineering they did on the car. The thing is, every car has details that are at least that interesting. See if you can get access to the engineers. See what clever tricks they implemented on their cars – things we might never even see – that they are proud of. I guarantee there are cool hacks over even the lowliest econobox: tricks with sheet metal to save weight while providing crash resistance – tricks to reduce noise insight, or change the pitch of the noise to better fit what people want to hear. Figure out why different transmissions feel different. I don't know, but I'll bet that if you can get to the people behind any car, they will tell you all sorts of stories about it. The marketing people might even let you pass one or two along to us. Remind them of how much people loved that McLaren tidbit and I'll bet they'll give.
4. Random interesting shit, like what governs seating positions for different cars? What did designers have to work around? Why are some cars uncomfortable? What has the research said about people who like "command seating" vs. a proper sportscar layout on the floor. How do they decide on the seating parameters?
The above might sound trivial, but I'll bet that on the net, good, definitive articles about a subject will actually get read and referenced. It stuns me that we can have so much drivel about cars without actually talking about all the really cool differences between one Mazda's suspension philosphy and Nissan's. I realize that there are proprietary issues, but *some* of this stuff has got to be common knowledge among designers. It's better than the endless debate about the newest car photos or performance numbers, or the marketing foibles of the day. It's not like you all are churning out content at a blinding pace – it seems like SSL could be the perfect forum for this kind of thing…
Anyway, I'll stop telling you how to run your site and go back to reading it now. Thanks, and apologies if I'm being dumb/lame/offensive.
In order for a marketing message to be effective, it has to pick up on the zeitgeist of the times. The reason "Chevy runs deep" is relevant for discussion is because is burrows to the heart of much conflict and strife over the last ~2 years. GM is a large, multinational corporation, but it's so large and long-lived that it has meaning to many Americans beyond a corporate entity that sells a good. In a country that's declining from its role as a commercial and industrial hegemon, GM is a symbol of that decline.
Taking a step farther back, advertising in general is still part of our cultural fabric. Just because a work is corporate sponsored doesn't automatically disqualify it from being interesting, funny or meaningful.
Thumbs up for remembering that line from pilot
Yawn.