Sunday October 29, 2006

I just had to comment on something. Surely all of you have seen this advertisement, which Chevrolet has spent a mind-boggling $400 million on airing ad nauseam.

I cannot beat the retort sent in by a reader of Bill Simmons’ ESPN column: “What is your problem with the ‘This is Our Country’ Chevy truck ads? Whoever thought that Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, the Vietnam War, Watergate, western wildfires, Hurricane Katrina, and 9/11 should be bunched together to sell a truck is a marketing genius! When Chevy opens a new ad campaign for the Malibu, they should use the same song with a montage of the AIDS crisis, the Rodney King beating, Kurt Cobain’s suicide, the O.J. trial, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Columbine massacre, and the Abu Ghraib prison photos. You’re telling me you wouldn’t want to buy a Malibu after seeing that?”

*applauds* As they say in the business, “Well-played.” Honestly, how did this get through a focus group? Perhaps I wouldn’t loathe it so if I hadn’t seen it in excess of 83,000 times, since it was featured in EVERY commercial break of EVERY postseason baseball game. I hate advertising in general that doesn’t actually talk about the product in the slightest … but what is the message? “Chevy remembers when black people couldn’t vote … and when they drowned in New Orleans. Buy our truck!”? This advertisement just convinces me that Chevrolet is responsible for this country’s demise. And in some small way, perhaps, it is, because General Motors is the quintessential example of why America is doomed: a company that has just coasted since the 1950s, failing to reward innovation, then wonders why no one wants to buy their cars — and expects taxpayers to bail them out. Great work, GM. You deserve to die a slow, painful death — especially when you spend $400 million on a sickeningly crass, vile advertising campaign instead of actually, y’know, BUILDING BETTER CARS. I know that I’m certainly never buying a car made by an American company. My Honda Accord has 75,000 miles on it and still runs the same as it did six years ago. If it was a Taurus or a Sunfire, it’d likely be falling apart by now.

And Mr. Mellencamp … you have sold your soul. Unless you were broke, man, you have no excuse for this.