For years, TV viewers have been bombarded by car commercials that scream and blare, both visually and audibly. Rather than outline a certain model's fine points or focus on its fuel-efficiency, these bully-boy ads flaunt vehicles that careen around corners, shoot gravel toward the camera, and appear to roar down the open road - or even through crowded urban streets - at breakneck speeds.
When gasoline prices shot upward in 2008, some ads adopted a more pragmatic tone, promoting gas mileage rather than acceleration times. The brazen appeals didn't disappear, of course. As fuel prices eased, enthusiasm for depictions of tire-spinning takeoffs rebounded a bit, too. But not for every manufacturer. One of them toned down even further than the rest with its mild-mannered message.
Rather than boldly flaunting either its vehicles' performance or its comfort/convenience features, that one automaker in 2009 sounded like it was practically begging for attention. In summer, a TV commercial featured a painfully earnest fellow, pleading for recognition of Saturn's appeal to customers. "Saturn builds cars Americans want to buy," he whined, proclaiming that the company issued five new models in recent years.
Before scrutinizing what's happened to Saturn since that ad debuted, let's take a look at that claimed "new-model" list. First off, the Aura midsize sedan qualified as new, even though it was a cousin to Chevrolet's Malibu. So did the Outlook crossover wagon, which also was related to other General Motors models. Saturn's Sky roadster? Essentially, it was a close kin to the Pontiac Solstice - and both companies have lost their membership in the GM fold. Saturn's compact Vue SUV was reworked for 2008, and thus might qualify as almost "new."
What might have been the freshest Saturn of them all, the stylish, fuel-efficient compact Astra hatchback, touting European-style handling, debuted as a 2008 model. Yet, the Astra was gone when the 2009 season started. Sure, it was new, though based on a European Opel model. But if it couldn't even hang on for a single season, Astra wasn't exactly a sterling example for the company's new-product rundown.
Neither the gentleman in the commercial nor anyone else seems to ask one vital question: What happened to the compact-size, frugal-running automobiles that established Saturn's reputation in the first place? Perhaps even more important, what about that heavily-promoted special sort of shopping experience that Saturn buyers were promised - and which, in fact, induced many of them to shop and buy a Saturn rather than some other brand. At some point, Saturn simply appeared to stop pushing that element of the company's attractions, as if a gentler buying process didn't matter anymore.
Difficult times call for imaginative approaches. So, Saturn's tamely pleading promotion might have signaled an innovative way to push vehicles. Still, the bolder-is-best folks, appealing to shoppers' underlying, darker urges, still take up space on the airwaves.
In a recent Subaru commercial, the driver of a 2010 Legacy picks up a stranded cab driver. "Mind if I take a short cut?" he asks his temporary passenger, then hits the gas assertively to scamper up narrow streets and down rapid curves. At their destination, the driver's face sinks into a smirk, eliciting a knowing nod of approval from the passenger.
Now, the Legacy is a highly capable sedan that maneuvers with expertise and finesse. Does this mean potential buyers need to be encouraged to make use of the car's admitted talents in order to tantalize a passenger or slyly stimulate its driver?
No wonder the automakers still take the path of promising relief from bottled-up aggression by indulging in shameless use of their products. For decades, far too many of us have fallen for the careening coupes and wheel-churning sport sedans that dash across TV screens and leap out from the flamboyantly-colored pages of magazines. When ads with brazen images keep appearing, they're probably working. And working very well indeed. No one, after all, wants to put millions of dollars into an ad campaign that wins awards from the fuel-thrift and emissions-cutting crowd, but fails to sell automobiles.
TV screens still are filled with screeching tires, twist-and-turn halts, and what appear to be triple-digit velocities. Perhaps not quite as many as there were a year or two ago, when the auto industry was in better financial shape and fuel-efficiency was something to talk about rather than act upon.
Nothing new here. Since the 1950s, automakers - like other advertisers - have stressed intangible benefits of their products, focusing on image far more than utility. That period saw the rise of motivation research, as chronicled by author Vance Packard in his book, The Hidden Persuaders, published way back in 1957. We'll take a close look back at that critical era, which served as the dawn of psychologically-oriented sales messages, in our next editorial. Nearly forgotten today, such pioneers of depth research as Ernst Dichter and Pierre Martineau set in motion an array of new, darker ways to market products to mass audiences - willingly or otherwise.
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