Can we talk about...BS philosophizing? (automotive edition)
- us6771
- Mar 26
- 2 min read
Updated: Mar 26
CLIENT: OK, so we’re looking for a campaign for our new compact car.
CREATIVE: You’re not buying a car, you’re transcending the very notion of mobility.
CLIENT: What’s that?
CREATIVE: Be boundless, shatter the boundaries that are holding you back, manifest velocity.
CLIENT: Yes, of course, but if we could return to the briefing for a second. This is a vehicle very much targeted at younger Millennials who live in cities.
CREATIVE: Forge the road less traveled, blaze the nexus of destiny. This isn’t driving; it’s an ecosystem of momentum.
CLIENT: I think we’re getting off track here.
CREATIVE: Unleash your indulgent passion for the pulse of tomorrow, embrace unrelenting audacity, redefine the path of peerless performance.
CLIENT: You’re just saying words now.
CREATIVE: Unyieldingly effortless, intuitively iconoclastic, a sensorial symphony of intoxicating harmony…
CLIENT: You’re fired.
Can we just…not?
I am likely not the first person to watch a commercial by a car company and find myself suffocated by the bullshit philosophizing that permeates the category. But goddamn, this stuff sucks.
When your whole approach (which you’d probably label ‘a synergistically orchestrated trajectory of engagement’ because 'approach' has too few syllables) has been parodied
ad nauseum, you might want to rethink it.
Nearly a decade ago – that’s, like, 12 lifetimes in advertising – the brilliant Buy The Car Not The Ad campaign out of DDB Sydney skewered this nonsense.
When lines like “Is that an orchestra? No, it’s the sound of luxury” are delivered tongue in cheek it should make those writing such crap with their tongues elsewhere hang their heads in shame – or at least leave the purple prose to gawky high school poets.
I understand the need to big up your brand, to make the purchase of a $60K hunk of metal and plastic sound more consequential...but c’mon.
Maybe this stuff shifts units and everybody involved in the making of any of these abominations is skipping over to Cannes to pick up their award, their prestigious leonine accolade. But I doubt it. And I seriously doubt that such cod philosophy resonates with the average car buyer, but what do I know?.
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