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Two Takes on Tech: Dodge Journey's "Search Engine" and Jaguar's Machines

Commenting on a recent post on this blog, media critic Joseph Frango made the observation that our culture is becoming increasingly disembodied, as more and more facets of everyday life and commerce take up full-time residence on the web.  Judging from conversations I've overheard at social events lately, a lot of people seem to be thinking the same thing.

It's as if once, to paraphrase Wordsworth, the world was too much with us, now both the world and ourselves have evacuated the premises for cyberspace.  And we miss our bodily selves and the earth they once walked upon.

In this light, I found it amusing how quickly  the field of commodity aesthetics -- i.e., advertising -- was able to pick up on this tremor in the social nervous system.   And, as always, the solution to the vauge angst such qualms produce is found in the products advertised.

Here are two recent car commercials that take on the theme of disembodiment in different ways.  The first is for Dodge (though the version I actually saw didn't have the contest it mentions in it). The second is a new Jaguar XJ spot:
 
 

The Dodge ad, despite all its references to web culture, is really quite traditional.  How many car spots have you seen over the years that promise you that the machine being promoted offers the perfect escape from the civilization that created it?  Or that the car is designed to help you get back in touch with nature?

But what's new about the message here are the metaphors.  This Dodge doesn't contain any ordinary motor, but a search engine, to help you escape the other search engines that enslave you (or, at least, keep you chained to you desk).

Nevertheless, the spot seems haunted by the technical reality it would flee.  If a car is now a search engine, what does that make the terrain it would explore?  Jacque Derrida's deconstructive philosophy once insisted that "there's nothing outside the text"; here, the language of the spot suggests to me that "there's nothing outside the web".  

The beauty of this scenario is that it plays to the desire to have your cake and eat it too.  You still get the comforts of a midsized SUV.  But rather than worry about what price the environment might pay for your pleasure, you are encouraged to think of your Dodge Journey as a way to re-discover that environment's wonder.

Maybe that's why the spot made me think of these lines from a poem by Campbell McGrath:

"Everything yields to the woodsman's axe
but still we are not satisfied.
Now we yearn for the vanished trees!"

Cyborg's Have More Fun

The Jaguar spot also replays elements of classic commercials.  Isn't the personal power it promises a familiar theme in car ads?  But as with Dodge, something new is added when this message is translated into the tech-obsessed language of today.  In fact, you could say the commercial invokes, through its beautiful science fiction film work, a sort of technological sublime, with allusions to everything from Fritz Lang's Metropolis to Apple's iconic 1984 TV commercial.

It does all this to make a point  about how smart the Jag's driving technology has become.  And then it ups the ante to insist that of all the forms of artificial intelligence you meet every day, there's only one brainy enough to meld with not just your mind, but your entire being.

So the point the spot makes is ironic.  For it implies that becoming one with this technology, rather than civilize you even more, will enable you to unleash your inner animal.   This means that the best way to retrieve your authenticity is to become a cyborg.

That's why I find the tag line so evocative.  "How alive are you?" it asks, suggesting, of course, that without this very expensive prosthetic device, you're a mere member of the walking dead.  Or worse, a machine.

You could say that both commercials, then, employ a hair of the dog that bit you logic.  If it's our increasingly technologic civilization that's getting you down, the best cure is more of that civilization in the form of another (and in Jaguar's case, even stronger) dose of its technology.

It's a contradictory logic, to be sure.  But it's one that underpins many of the communications Consumer Culture sends our way.  So much so, that the problem with such a message, rather than its oddness, may be that it's not weird enough to make a real impact.  Thoughts?

 

The "Forever" Brand: Thoughts on Chevy's 2012 Apocalypse Commercial

There's been so much on the web and TV about the big car ad of the Super Bowl ("Halftime in America"), I thought I'd weigh in about a different one -- a spot that relies more on the bizarre than the authentic to make its point.

I'm thinking about the Chevy spot that invokes both the Mayan and Biblical (it's raining frogs!) apocalypse -- and our dreaded year of 2012.  If you haven't seen it yet, check it out:

 

Of course, this satiric way of claiming that a Chevy lasts longer than a Ford has been accused of exaggeration.  As reported by brandchannel, a representative for Ford  Trucks lodged this protest:

"They  [Chevy] cite R.L. Polk data on longevity -- not durability.  If you look at R.L. Polk's data on durability ... there are more Ford trucks on the road with more than 250,000 miles.  We've made our point and we'll always defend our products."

You might expect religious folks, at least those who believe in prophecies of the end times, to get upset with this scenario too.  For the spot takes an episode of sacred history and uses it cavalierly, for ironic purposes (and, of course, to make a buck).

Though I suppose even fundamentalists -- at least in the West -- are numb to this by now (and probably find it funny themselves), because hey, that's what modernity (not to mention advertising) is all about. 

Nevertheless, there is more than a grain of truth in this spot.  Chevy, after all, did survive a crash of nearly apocalyptic proportions.  What saved the company, though, was not simply the durability of their trucks, but the same thing that saved Chrysler: a little Keynesian economics (in the form of government funds).  (Ford refused the bailout offer.)

Also, there's something about the way the main character shrugs off  the loss of "Dave" that mirrors the dopey "whatever" attitude of the survivor in all of us -- happy to be one of the lucky ones who made it (as the theme song suggests), but powerless to do much about the daily catastrophe.
 

What Comes After the End?

But what I think the spot is most accurate in portraying is a contemporary mindset.  Astute observers of the apocalyptic imagery running through our pop culture, such as Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Zizek, have remarked about how easy it seems to imagine the end of the world.

What's difficult, perhaps impossible to envision, they argue, is the end of capitalism -- a system responsible, in their eyes, for this continuing sense of dread in the first place.

The spot's closing line captures this idea perfectly: "Chevy Silverado" the (Tim Allen) voice-over intones, "from the beginning of your work day, till the end of the world.  Chevy runs deep."

And the images act out this sentiment in a literal fashion: the world around these characters is crumbling, but their trucks keep going and going - like Engergizer bunnies.  What survives the end of the world?  Products, in this case trucks and twinkies.  (Perhaps their preservatives have made them invulnerable?)

But despite the spot's hyper-bullishness about its brand, it nevertheless seems bruised by the times. It's as if the humor is there to help relieve a lurking anxiety.

Because even if a few brands survive the next meltdown, what's the point -- if the rest of the economy is (as in the spot) annihilated?  Of course, the commercial's humor assures us this could never happen.  But then, you've got to ask yourself, how did the apocalypse end up in a spot to sell a truck in the first place?

Back in 2008 it seemed, at times, the conomic end was near.  At the very least a spot like this proves the trauma of the deepest moments of "The Great Recession" hasn't left us just yet.

And that trauma continues to color thoughts about the future.  In fact, the jokey quality of the commercial seems flavored by a bit of gallows humor.  It even made me think of Robert Creeley's classic poem "I Know a Man":

I Know a Man

As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking, -- John, I

sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what

can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,

drive, he sd, for
christ's sake, look
out where yr going

The authors of this commercial would, of course, make an addition to this poem.  In their version, there would be an extra line; the poem would end by saying:

"and make sure you're driving a Chevy."

Also of Interest:

Click here to see my review of poet Nick Piombino and artist Toni Simon's collaborative book, Contradicta, at Evergreen Review Online:

 

Of Games and Nightmares: the American Horror Story TV Show Meets the PlayStation 3 Commercial

The other week, while watching the last few episodes of the wonderfully creepy American Horror Story TV series, I had a suitably jarring experience.

If you haven't seen the show, it's about an American family that moves into a house that turns out to be haunted -- and ultimately destroys them all.

In the penultimate episode, Violet, a younger, likeable ghost, is attempting to rid the house of an extremely nasty member of the living dead.  She learns a spell for banishing bad spirits and tries it on him.

She flings the evil ghost's watch into the fireplace and untters a mystic word.  In response, he quivers ironically, and then bursts out laughing.  Violet gasps: "the spell didn't work!"  The bad ghost tells her that they never do.  People make up these rituals, he explains, to make them feel in control.  "But guess what," he mutters, "they're not."

This pessimistic vibe lingers throughout the episode.  A little later, Violet's mother, Vivian (who's still alive at this point), has the misfortune of going through childbirth in this freaky abode.  As you might expect, things don't go right -- and she starts to hemorrhage severly.

Her husband begs her to fight on.  But Vivian can also see Violet's spirit, who tells her, "mom, if you're in pain, you can let go."  Fading at this point, she replies: "I don't think I have a choice."

Unusual as it was to see a TV show where the stars don't ulitmately "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" and "take control", what was just as surprising, in this context, were some of the commercials that paid for it.

The most striking to me was one for PlayStation 3, which praises a young hero named "Michael":

 

At first viewing, it seems as if American Horror Story and PlayStation 3 come from completely different universes.  One ruled by defeat -- the other by conquest.

The Horror of the Real Estate Bubble

The "horror" in American Horror Story, in addition to the phantoms and spooks, is the seeming helplessness of the family stuck in this nasty home.

And you can see why this program became the new water cooler show: in an age of foreclosures, it captured an element of the zeitgeist.

The haunted house genre is after all, sometimes seen as an allegory about the anxieties caused by real estate -- and how sometimes, when a house goes bad, it can threaten a family's financial and emotional existence.  Here's literary critic Walter Benn Michaels on the Amityville Horror:

"Think of the plight of the Amityville couple as investors in real estate: having risked everything to get themselves into the spectacularly inflationary market of 1975, they find themselves owning the only house on Long Island whose value is declining -- the only one for a few years, anyway, until rising interest rates, as intangible as ghosts only more powerful, would begin to produce a spectacular effect on housing prices everywhere."

The Triumph of the Gamer's Will

But if American Horror Story is a fable about being overpowered by mysterious (perhaps ultimately economic) forces, is not the PlayStation 3 ad its mirror opposite?  In it, Michael, the gamer (whose portrait we see at the end) rather than get overpowered by phantoms, anxieties or crisis situations, is instead, their total master.  The "ghosts and goblins" in the spot worship the guy like a god!

All of which makes me wonder if there's not a sort of cause and effect relation between these two spectacular forms of entertainment.  It's as if the godlike pleasure of the video game has been invented as an antidote for the grim realities the TV show brings to mind.

You can see why young people -- especially males -- would love PlayStation 3.  In a world where mom and pop may be over stretched, perhaps stuck with responsibilities and investments (real estate or otherwise) that are going south fast, a game like this at least creates a fantasy where a little personal heroism is still thinkable.

And the tag line "Long Live Play" suggests something else.  Perhaps the reason the act of playing (like ritual) has been around as long as human culture itself is that our awareness of a potential disaster, always seemingly lurking around the corner, creates the need for mastery of some sort -- over some domain or reality.

Even if it's all only a game.  Thoughts? 

 

Is Jenny Still from the block? Jennifer Lopez's "My World" TV Commercial for Fiat

Recently, a standard, celebrity endorsement TV commercial started a mini-firestorm across the blogosphere, twitter and even mainstream media.

In the spot, Jennifer Lopez seemingly drives through the Bronx in a Fiat and describes how much her old hood means to her:

 

It turns out, as exposed by The Smoking Gun and other blogs, when JLo tells us how the Bronx neighborhood where she grew up inspires her "to be tougher, to stay sharper, to think faster", she is actually in L.A. doing a voiceover -- and the person we see in the Fiat is a body double.

To make matters worse, reporter Ed Morales witnessed the shoot (it took place close to his home), and took a photo that showed that the car in the commercial actually broke down.

If this weren't enough, the graffiti artists who created the giant heart you see at the beginning of the spot, also cried foul.  Their work, which Fiat used without permission, is copyrighted (Fiat ended up settling with them out of court).

And then, in the midst of all this, during Lopez's performance at the American Music Awards a Fiat appeared suddenly in the middle of her act, offering an instance of product placement so blatant, a fellow performer questioned her integrity.   The Fiat appears a little over a minute in...

 

The Authenticity Dilemma

Amusing as all these exposes are, initially I came away wondering, as Anderson Cooper did, what all the outrage was about.

After all, part of advertising's mystique has to do with the whole real or fake dilemma ads pose.  This is a genre of communication that delights in ambiguity. Think of the iconic headline that launced Clairol in the U.S.: "Does she or doesn't she?"

You could even argue that one of the thrills consumer goods provide is the tantalizing possibiity that they allow you to try out and even adopt new identities.

But with a little reflection, I could see why people got irked.  Lopez has built her brand around the image of a superstar who keeps it real by staying in touch with her roots.  Who can forget those lines from her most famous song:

"Don't be fooled by the rocks that I got
I'm still, I'm still Jenny from the block."

And it's this aura of authenticity that Fiat wants to associate with its cars.  Here is Fiat's marketing guru, Olivier Francois:

"Jennifer fits perfectly with the brand not because of who she is but because of what she is -- authentic, passionate, modern, and a fighter determined to stand out from the rest.  As you look at her career path, she embodies the Fiat philosophy, 'Life is Best When Driven.'"

Francois has reason to be confident with such a strategy.  He used the "authenticity" sell in his remarkably successful re-launch of Chrysler -- with TV spots starring blue-collar heroes like Eminem and others (covered on this blog here and here).  And an earlier viral video ad connected with the Lopez campaign ranked 4th most popular of its genre this year.

Nevertheless, you can see the contradiction contemporary ideas of authenticity often entail.  Francois praises Lopez for her driven, competitive personality.  She is authentic because, despite the odds against her, she fought for her individual vision.

Yet, the spot isn't so much about her individuality, but her loyalty to her community.  In fact, it's her "street cred" that affords her, as a performer, much of her bravado, swagger and authority.

Perhaps, then, the source of irritation with this spot drives from an issue Michael Lally (from Lally's Alley) has brought to my attention recently -- that of co-optation.

The fact that Lopez and Fiat simulated her cruise through the Bronx, appropriating its urban art, street scenes and people for their own uses, no doubt seemed to offer a particularly ungraceful example of cultural co-optation.

All of which makes me wonder if questions of authenticty become particularly acute for celebrities with working class roots.  On the one hand, they've got to transcend, even betray, their backgrounds to get over.

On the other, they've got to stay loyal to their cultural milieu in order to use it credibly -- especially if their artistic personas draw on their class or ethnic identity.

In any case, Fiat must be hoping the accusations about the ad's fakery don't reflect upon their car.

For in the past, Fiat has had its own problems with authenticity.  I've read that the last time the brand made a push for the U.S. market, instead of a hip, urban ride, it got a reputation as a car that broke down a lot.

The brand's name, in fact, became an acronym for "Fix It Again, Tony." Thoughts? 

From Diesel (Jeans) Island to Zuccotti Park: Thoughts About OWS and Some Recent TV Ads and Videos

I've been away from this blog for a few weeks to get other writing projects done.  Now that I'm back, I thought it would be interesting to look at a few TV ads and videos that are  related -- directly or indirectly -- to Occupy Wall Street and/or our current political culture.

First, one from the Right (specifically focused on a Democratic candidate) that slams OWS and everyone associated with it.

Negative Political Attack Ad on Elizabeth Warren

 

This Karl Rove production associates Warren with the anachronistic sign of Communism ("radical redistribution of wealth"), with a little 60s era "hippie druggie" stuff thrown in for good measure.

But what interests me more here is one of the other reasons the ad offers as to why this rising Democratic star is "dangerous" -- she's an intellectual theorist.  This sort of "accusation" is partly a recycling of Cold War-era anti-intellectualism.  But it also points to another cliche about intellectuals: they're supposedly ineffectual, i.e., "all theory and no practice."

This can also be related to a common criticism of Occupy Wall Street.  Some commentators have complained that the movement is indefinite as to its demands.  At the heart of their irritation is the implication that OWS is all ideals, no "getting down to brass tacks" -- a variation on the theme of all talk/protest, no (effectual) action.

The next ad, produced for OWS (funded through an online crowdsourcing site), does a lot to answer both the criticisms of radicalism and impracticality.

Occupy Wall Street TV Ad

 

This ad seems designed to answer the question of "what do they want?" head on.  Every person who makes a cameo here begins their statement with "I want..." Some demands/desires are more general -- but others are quite specific.

Additionally, the mosaic of faces presented in the ad is from a wide enough swath of U.S. society (and the people look "normal" enough) to prove that OWS, rather than a radical "them" is a home grown "us".  You  might call the spot a representation of representativeness -- signifying not "dangerous foreign collectivism" but U.S. democracy with a capital D.

"Diesel Island Is Going Down!" (Video Ad)

In the context of the argument about the need for change that you see in the first two ads, the new video ad below for Diesel Jeans (though not directly about OWS) is  all the more fascinating.

A few months back, this blog covered a Diesel campaign in which the brand created a wacky kingdom called Diesel Island, "the least fucked up country of all".  It was an imaginary nation, made up of a kooky community of young idealists who all, of course, wore Diesel Jeans.

In this new video, we find out that this utopian experiment in (heavily-branded) democracy, alas, has succumbed to corruption and scandal:



Looking at this clip now, it's hard not to think, by coincidence at least,  of that other locale where utopian impulses are springing up: Zuccotti Park.  And though neither of the first two spots touches on it directly, the utopian element of OWS is what actually excites some commentators  Here is Matt Taibbi, reporting for Rolling Stone:

"...Occupy Wall Street was always about something much bigger than a movement against big banks and modern finance.  It's about providing a forum for people to show how tired they are not just of Wall Street, but everything.  This is a visceral, impassioned, deep-seated rejection of the entire direction of our society, a refusal to take even one more step forward into the shallow commercial abyss of phoniness, short-term calculation, withered idealism and intellectual bankruptcy that American mass society has become.  If there is such a thing as going on strike from one's own culture, this is it."

Is not the original message of Diesel Island (and other imagined brand communties such as the Republic of Corona) exactly the sort of thing that Taibbi sees OWS as rejecting? That is, the offering, say, of brand images and experiences as simulated stand-ins for more actual sorts of freedom.

Some scholars claim the ideological function of consumer culture is precisely to provide such  consolation prizes as substitutes for our own insurgent impulses.  William Davies put it this way, in a recent article in New Left Review:

"Advertising, like management theory, is fuelled by a critique of the dominant normative-economic regime within which it sits, facilitating safe acts of micro-rebellion against the macro-social order."

In this light, the dissolving of Diesel Island seems almost honorable.  It's as if consumer culture's unconscious is saying (in video dream-speak): "hey, when you've got real utopian experiment in the news, who needs a simulated one?"  (Though what Diesel's ad folks really intend is probably to  just to promote the brand as cool,  by way of joking around with the  political zeitgeist.)

In any case, this all makes you wonder: if experiments like OWS persist, what will it mean for consumer culture as we've known it?  Thoughts?

 

Mirror, Mirror: Thoughts on Corona's "Party Mashup" Rooftops Commercial

Thanks to Richard Taub, who drew my attention to this spot, in a comment on a previous post.  It's for Corona Light -- and it's the first one, according to Ad Age, that abandons the beach images for which the  brand is famous.  Instead, it stays in the city and features two rooftop dance parties:

 

In the Ad Age article I mentioned, Jim Sabia, a Marketing-VP involved with the brand, states that one of the goals of this spot is to build a seperate identity for Corona Light, by differentiating it from its more "beachy" parent brand.  As Sabia puts it, "we want Corona to be on  the beach and Corona Light to be a little more urban, a little more major market."

The Ad Age piece goes on to fill in a few details about the purpose and plot of the ad (called "Party Mashup") that I didn't pick up in my first viewing:

"In the ad, music from the casual celebration conflicts a more upscale party nearby.  The tension is resolved when the two DJs...join their music together, which is meant to play on Corona Light's positioning as a premium/casual brand..." 

The overall vibe of this spot reminds me of other beer commercials I've seen recently.  There's a warm, social atmosphere -- much like the Heineken "Entrance Man" spot covered on this blog a few posts back.  Corona shows its product enhancing a situation where people can relax for a moment about whatever social realities might separate them, and play creatively together.  In short, it's got that mildly utopian feel I've see in lots of ads lately.

But even more interesting to me than the spot's content is the form.  I'm thinking specifically of the "double-ness" of the images -- not one, but two rooftop parties are jammed into a mere 30 seconds.

And after the initial tension between them is resolved, it's as if their differences are erased -- and you could say they mirror each other in celebratory vibe and identity.

Stepping onto the Mirror Stage

This all reminded me of a theory I'd been reading up on lately, about how children form their identities.  In one account of this process, famously invented  by psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, the child starts to build a sense of self through internalizing imagery.  Specificially, Lacan refers to the fascination which very young children exhibit when they discover their own images in mirrors (hence this period of development is referred to as "the Mirror Stage").

Lacan goes on to theorize that while the image in the mirror is the same as the child, it is also quite different.  Bodies, especially those of the presumably less inhibited very young, are also an anarchic cacaphony of drives, pulsations and emotions.

As a result, Lacan thought that while such images were captivating and even erotic, once internalized, they could also be alienating -- making you doubt your identity as much as they helped you "imagine" it.

The theory also suggests that as a result of these inner images, when we grow older we're destined to be at war with ourselves  -- for they form an "ideal ego" we can never live up to -- one that is always more "together" than we can possibly ever feel.  And these feelings are enhanced and exacerbated as we internalize other "ideal" images we'd like to mirror (such as people we think are "together", or simply "cool" -- like celebrities).

Good Twin, Bad Twin

Musing about this theory, I wondered if the appeal of some ads was that their products heal, symbolically, such inner divisiveness.  The initial tension between the rooftop images in the spot, after all, is soothed away -- by a common love of music, and of partying with Corona Light.

And what Corona does on a social level, others ads do on an individual one.  Think of makeup ads.  I remember one in which Drew Barrymore spoke about a Cover Girl product that would introduce you to "your skin's twin."

In light of Lacan's theory, I'd interpret that line in a double way.  Of course, it means the makeup, that promises viewers (in other spots) a "more perfect you", blends nicely with whatever skin tone they have.  But it also might be read as offering them kinship (if not "twinship") with an "ideal" image of someone as "cool and together" as a star like Barrymore.

Pop culture at large seems obsessed with the dual effect of identification/alienation such "mirror images" provoke.  Think of all the movies that feature "the evil twin."  The poster for the new TV show Ringer (starring Sarah Michelle Geller) says it all.

But the job of ads, of course, is to present scenarios and products that promise to pacify such conflicts (or at least keep them offstage).   Thoughts? 

 

Ideals on Wheels: Buick's "What Matters" Commercial

I've been seeing a commercial for Buick a lot lately that tries to redefine the whole idea of "luxury."  In this spot, the word and the brand that represents it have more to do with finding meaning in your life than the love of glam.  Check it out:

 

Judging from its images, which show family-oriented, suburban middle-class types, you get the idea that the tag "your kind of luxury" is addressed to people who don't think of themselves as particularly rich.  They're unpretentious, "come as you are" folks.

This sort of appeal may be part of brand tradition.  Consumer Culture scholar James B. Twitchell has written "Buick has had a history of being a car for strivers who have not quite made it."

So the suggestion that this more everyday-folks sort of luxury "isn't luxury the way  you've always known it" but something new,  isn't completely true -- because we have seen a variation of it in other Buick ads. Here is Twitchell again, on a Buick campaign from the late 90s:

"Now Buick does have a luxury car, the Park Avenue.  But the Century is an underling now positioned as 'A luxury car for everyone.'  The TV ad reinforces this positioning.  In one commercial we see scenes of family bliss, as the voice-over by the actor Willem Defoe asks: 'Are rich people taller than the rest of us?  Are their loved ones more deserving of an air bag?  Was the sun created solely for their enjoyment?'"

What I do think is unusual, though, is what I mentioned earlier: the way the spot redefines "luxury" as a "life of meaning" -- and somehow connects this to its cars.

The credit here goes to copywriting -- because the script (intoned by "everyman" Kevin Bacon) makes the transition from the values sermon at the beginning to the brand copy at the end with a seamless grace.

And the ease with which it achieves this is all the more remarkable when you realize that this spot really contains two scripts.

The values speech at the beginning is actually adapted from a poem by Michael Josephson, the head of an organization whose goal it to encourage people to be more ethical -- and kinder -- in their everyday lives.  The "brand script" at the end of the spot is written to payoff the poem by connecting its values to Buick.

It does this well enough where you almost don't question the connection it draws.  Buick is a brand that expresses  these -- and your -- values.  It is a company that knows a meaningful life is "the greatest luxury of all."  Because of this high-mindedness, the logic goes, it makes cars of substance and quality.

In short, what's implied is that Buick offers you a more solid, dependable car than the trendy ones people who like to show off prefer (perhaps these are superficial nouveau-riche types?).  If in the old Marxian theory machines were "congealed labor", Buick, in this spot, becomes a set of ideals on wheels.

A Shift in Cultural Mood?

The playing off of ethical materialism against the more flashy kind isn't new.  In fact, if this spot is designed to appeal (as Twitchell's comments would suggest) to social sectors still on the rise, you could categorize it as classic.  Classes striving to get ahead commonly characterize themselves as more moral than the "decadent" folks above them.

Nevertheless, the spot's redefinition of luxury seems a real shift.  It wasn't so long ago that populist heroes were celebrated for their shameless flaunting of the signs of wealth in their gaudiest forms.   Here is Twitchell again, writing about Donald Trump in the late 90s:

"Perhaps the only person who really qualifies as the Ur-yuppie is a superannuated one, Donald Trump.  The Donald has become an eidolon of opuluxe on steroids.  Not only has he moved through serial marriages complete with fathering a daughter named after a store (Tiffany), not only has he demonstrated his unflagging interest in pimping objects brandishing his name, but he has remained unrepentantly materialistic.  It's me, me, me.  If old-style luxury was about subtly advertising that you had money, Trump has removed all the subtlety."

Despite Trump's momentary surge as a Tea Party candidate, you have to wonder if in troubled economic times like ours his type of glitzy "winning is the only thing" sort of ambition plays as well as it once did.

And in this light, maybe this spot can be read as a longing for a sort of "capitalism with a human face" -- i.e., a mode of everyday life that's a bit less dog-eat-dog, where people play and work a little more nicely.  Thoughts? 

"Imported from Detroit" and Made in America: Dr. Dre and John Varvatos in Chrysler Commercials

Chrysler's "Imported from Detroit" campaign (the brainchild of French-born marketing guru Olivier Francois) covered on this blog a few months back, tuned out to be a hit.  brandchannel recently reported on its success:

"Chrysler was clearly onto something when it launched its breakthrough 'Imported from Detroit' campaign.  Sales spiked, leading the company to launch phase 2.  Explaining the positioning, Chrysler CMO Olivier Francois told brandchannel 'American coolness is essential to our strategy, because that's exactly what imports do not have, and some other American [luxury] brands don't have as well."

Here are two of the latest spots from the campaign that build on its position.  One featues Detroit-born high-fashion designer John Varvatos, the the other Dr. Dre:

 

 

The Chrysler 300 in these ads is considered a luxury car.  And one of the reasons the spots work, it seems to me (and perhaps one the secrets of the "American" positioning),  is that they're able to make luxury seem cool, rather than just boujie.  But how do they do that?

For one thing, they suggest that in America there's little shame in luxury.  Because this sort of luxe is accessible across class and race lines, if you work hard enough.

And the bold, blue-collar celebrity endorsers in these spots (like Eminem in the kickoff spot) have a nice rub-off on the car itself. Their presence and authenticity assure not only fine workmanship, but originality and most of all hipness.

A Bit Utopian...But So What?

You could say then, that these commercials work on reinventing the American Dream, not to mention the industrial might that made it credible.  Whether such a meaning rhymes with the current state of the economy may not really matter.  Ads are about wishes (often utopian) as much as they are about products.

But not only that.  Due to the increasing class stratification in the U.S., where "the top 1% alone control nearly 40% of the wealth,"  it turns out that the top 10% of households now "account for almost half of consumer spending."  In other words, the message of these spots simply doesn't have to be believable to everyone to make them effective.

And recent data reveals that "American Made" is an appealing pitch to the affluent.  brandchannel points outs that "traditionally, it has been the lower end brands that have leveraged the appeal of American-made, but now luxury brands have picked up the theme...

"An American Express Publishing/Harrison Group survey conducted this year showed that more than 75% of wealthy consumers like brands made in America, and 65% of them buy American-made products whenever possible."

The piece I'm quoting from speculates that the appeal of such branding could be the result of anything from ideas that buying American is good for business, patriotic -- or that such products are simply made better.  It also mentions a website (MadeInUSAForever), whose following is growing quickly, dedicated to this sort of "nationalist" shopping,  that offers more reasons why people should consume this way.

 Certainly, the idea that your consumption habits have political consequences has been richly elaborated throughout U.S. history.  The very identity of "the consumer", in fact, was invented in part by the New Deal administration as a counterweight against corporate power.

For that matter, the success of the Chrysler campaign itself will have an effect on current politics. Because the the U.S. car industry's rebirth was jumpstarted by government investment, it will be a key theme for the Dems in the upcoming presidential race.  The Obama campaign is even replacing McCain's "Joe the Plummer" with "James the Jeep Worker."

As far as the Chrysler campaign goes, though, I think the appeal is best explained by a bit of literary, rather than political, history.  It turns out that nationalism is tied to distinct meanings in terms of aesthetics, too.

The great literary historian, Pascale Casanova, tells us that in the evolution of world literature, France, via of course Paris, once assumed total dominance.  So much so, that the styles of Parisian art and writing were considered a universal measure of the best there was.  French aesthetics were judged the most sophisticated and "cosmopolitan" (or, as we'd put it today, they were the signature style of "globalism"). 

But, as German national consciousness rose, to compete with the French, another measure of good literature came about.  According to the German philosopher Herder, the arts, rather than copy the global standard (or aim for universality), should strive for authenticity.  And this would be achieved, he theorized, if they sought to express the "soul" of the Nation and its people.

Chrysler's CMO is following Herder's strategy for his brand communications.  What's more associated with the "American soul" than cool?

But, ironically, it's taken a sophisticated, French-born, cosmopolitan executive to grasp this. Thoughts?

 

Now from The Republic of Corona: The "Find Your Beach" Beer Commercial

The TV commercial for Corona Extra that's been airing the past few months is a bit different than  a lot of the other beer ads out there:

 

Targeted to a segment of the premium beer market, you don't see the male-oriented party animal approach you often do in spots for this product.  Instead (with the exception of one shot), you get lots of upscale couples.

As a result, there's a dreamy, romantic feel to this spot.  As Deborah Postrel puts it, "Grace, mystery,  and escape -- all the elements of glamour are there."  Postrel's blog, Deep Glamour, reveals this about the slogan:

"The 'Find Your Beach' ads visualize what Corona's ads have always implied (since most beer drinking doesn't take place at the beach): 'that the beach is where you make it,' as Marshall Ross, the chief creative officer for Corona's ad agency, Cramer-Krasselt, put it.  'We want to give literal, visual permission for people to take the Corona mindset with them.  Even to the ski slopes or the big city.'"

Since I've been thinking a lot lately about the theory that the advertising unconscious is full of repressed, utopian wishes, when I first noticed the "Find Your Beach" line, I couldn't help but associate it with an older rallying cry.

During the protests in France associated with "Mai '68" -- protests which often put forth utopian demands -- one of the most famous slogans was: "Beneath the pavement, the beach."  Here's a take on that line I got from the Brooklyn Views blog:

"The public beach - the epitome of undesignated non-utilitarian optimistic space - was the opposite of the street, an historic relic of an oppressive and cynical society based on private property."

Of course, the beaches in Corona ads don't remind you of any place you get to go for free.  When I did research on the brand, in fact, I found that the beach imagery (which has appeared in Corona spots for years) was inspired by expensive vacation locales:

"For several years, Corona's American sales were sluggish.  But during the mid-1980s, one of  [the manufacturer's] two American distributors...struck on a clever marketing strategy: pitching Corona to young American beer drinkers, many of them veteran of spring break at Cancun or Cabo San Lucas."

But my linking of beaches and utopias isn't as far-fetched as it seems.  Both are connected with "vacations" from everyday reality.  And, historically, utopian literature has been associated with travel writing, as both usually describe encounters with "new and ideal worlds."

The website for the brand, in fact, introduces you to one of these "new worlds."  It's a nation, invented by the brand, called the "Republic of Corona."  Here's an introductory video that tells you what they believe in:

 

Brands as Utopian Kingdoms

What's interesting to me about this clip is how similar the "Republic of Corona" is to the nation covered in the last post -- Diesel (Jeans) Island.  The ideologies of both discourage hype, embrace simplicity, and criticize advertising.  Cars are merely what get you from A to B --  not the status/power/sex symbols our ads make them out to be.  It doesn't matter what brand of jeans you wear.  Politics is suspect -- as is the workaholic lifestyle.

In short, what you see is an almost brand, tech and even civilization-free zone.  And in this way, the semantics here do share a bit with the "Mai '68" slogan.  But there is, of course, a crucial difference.

The Corona slogan urges you to find your own beach.  It's not something public.  It's more internal-- a state of mind you can carry with you anywhere (especially with the aid of the brand).   You don't need anything as dramatic as a revolution to escape all the branded things and experiences that drive you nuts about our society.

All you need is another brand.  Or perhaps, as the they say in alkie parlance, "a hair of the dog that bit you."

In a hyper-commodified culture, it's not surprising to find a brand appealing to you  by criticizing the act of branding itself.  Or for leisure items (like jeans or beer) to communicate through images of idealized sorts of escape.

But nevertheless, from a cultural standpoint, campaigns like Corona's and Diesel's have me wondering if their criticism of their own medium might be read as a sign of growing fatigue around the whole ethos of our hype-oriented society.

And this leads to another question: is there a point at which people grow so stressed that tiny, private utopias like these are no longer enough?  Thoughts?



 

Is Stupid the New Smart? Notes on Diesel (Jeans) Island and the "Be Stupid" Campaign

The cliche that "no person is an island" apparently doesn't apply to brands.  In this video, Diesel Jeans shows that it's not only an island, but a mini-nation.   One with its own "National Anthem":

 

I don't think I've ever seen an ad that's displayed such hyper-awareness of the global economy -- and its domino-like run of failing nations.  But what really fascinates me is how aggressively (and satirically) this ad plays with the concept of nationalism itself.

The anthem here is only one of the goofy ways this new "nation" simulates its independence.  On the website, you can tour Diesel Island, meet your fellow citizens, propose laws and holidays, and learn national "moral" commandments.  (My favorite: "Always remember where you're from, you don't want to go back there.")  

Of course, Diesel Nation isn't a place, but a state of mind.  One occupied by a particular philosophy. Parodying our own "Land of the free, home of the brave", the Island is described as "Land of the stupid and home of the brave."

In fact, as the copywriters (from the Global Agency SANTO) who wrote the manifesto-like video below make clear, neither freedom nor bravery is possible without stupidity:

 )

It Takes  a "Nation"...

The whole concept  of creating a "nation" around a brand is probably inspired by the notion  of "forming brand communities."  The idea is to gather people who identify with your product -- and offer them a way to share their experiences with it.

The hope is that such communities will identify with the brand strongly enough to not only stay with it, but to actually "evangelize" for you; i.e., create good word of mouth, leading eventually to sales.

If this sounds far-fetched, just think of how people identify with being "a Mac person," a "Harley owner" -- or, a couple of years ago, with being on Team Jacob or Team Edward.  Or think of the loyal communities around NFL, NBA or MLB teams.

And the attempt to drum up a community by kidding people into imagining themselves as part of some (in this case) wacky "nation", isn't really a stretch either.  For like all nations, Diesel Island is what Benedict Anderson (the great scholar and theorist of nationalism) would call an "Imagined Community."  As he puts it:

"It [a nation] is imagined because  the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them,  yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion...With a certain ferocity Gellner makes a comparable point when he rules that 'Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist.' " (p. 6)

And in the case of Diesel Island, hearing of and even meeting/sharing with  fellow members can now be simulated through social media.

But Why "Stupid"?

Here in the U.S., we've seen how excited people get when they are encouraged to rally around their own "know-nothingness".  But I'm not sure Diesel Jeans has the same thing in mind here -- at least not exactly.

Through urban slang, "stupid" (or "stoopid") has taken on new shades of meaning.   When, for example, an NBA star makes an amazing play -- one that that might look foolhardy to the non-gifted -- you hear: "that was a stoopid shot."  So the word can mean "daring" as well as "dumb."

Or as Diesel's founder put it: "It's about following your heart and not your head.  Stupid is about having the guts to risk, to take on the new and inventive, however dangerous."

Nevertheless, the word still carries a socially negative echo.  But this may work in the campaign's favor.  Because if you believe "brand community" pundits, one technique for forming such groups is to "have a common enemy."

Here's a guess as to who that might be in this case.  Since jeans are for laid-back, casual times, when it's ok to let your hair down  (and "get stoopid") like the neo-hippies in the video, perhaps your imaginary enemies are "workaholics".  In other words, "suits" (or maybe "nerds"?) -- working even during leisure time via "smart" electronic devices -- who compete by trying to broadcast their intelligence with rationalizations for everything they do.   This sort of stereotype certainly contrasts nicely with the low tech aura the videos give off.

Of course, it's a lot to ask a line of clothing  to carry the variety of meanings suggested by all this.  But that's advertising for you.

And, in any case, it's undeniable that people do form communities around their styles of consuming. With the credibility of more traditional forms of group identification (like nations) getting increasingly shaky, folks may make their social bonds (and create their social identities) with whatever's at hand. Thoughts?