Would You Buy A Car Adjacent To This Person?

I've always liked Mazda. There are plenty of reasons why:

• They're the only Japanese manufacturer that cares what cars look like.
• Like other manufacturers, they have a common corporate style to all their cars, but unlike other manufacturers, they've chosen one that doesn't look out of place on their smaller cars.
• They're one of the few manufacturers willing to make a sporty car that isn't just pathetic overcompensation.
• And of course, they just won't let the Wankel die.

But I gotta say, their most recent ads are pretty far fetched. No, not the one with the retro soundtrack courtesy of Chromeo. I mean the ones of the form:

• Admired person did this great thing
• (S)he has these great qualities.
• That's just like Mazda.

Even by the normal low standards of ads, that doesn't make any sense. Worse, it's just a simplistic implementation of advertising strategies: associate your products with with something else with good qualities. But they just dispense with the subtleties. No need to show athletic people driving the car; just talk about an athletic person, then talk about the car. It shows a really low opinion of us that they don't even dress up the trick. And there's no need to even have the endorser present, we can just toss up a montage of stock photos. That even robs us of the pretence that we're responding to the endorsement because we value the celebrity's judgement.

It even allows endorsement from beyond the grave. We can get celebrity appearances from Jackie Robinson, Bruce Lee, and James Naismith. That means a lot; I bet Naismith (1861-1939) really know his cars. And didn't Robinson already do an ad for Mercedes a few years ago? Speaking of which, Mazda is running an ad with Christine Sinclair in Canada, and an ad with Mia Hamm in the U.S.

So please, Mazda, ditch this commercial campaign, and come up with something else.  I'm sure the "zoom zoom" kid needs work.