GM Makes Hypocrisy, Not Cars

Recently, ads for Chevy Trucks have been built around focus groups comparing a picture of a guy and his truck, with a picture of an identical guy and a small car. (It's a Prius, though that's never mentioned.)



It's one of those screw-subtlety ads that I'm assuming appeal to some people, even if they make many others squirm.  I mean, you can poke fun with stereotypes of different drivers, but this one just lays on the insults unrepentantly.

You've got children running down the car driver. They seem a little unsure as they speak.  It's probably just because of the cameras, but I also suspect it's because they're essentially being asked to go against all the anti-bullying education they've been going through at school.  Then you have the women saying how much more attractive the guy with the truck is.  Think that through, ladies: You'd really chose the truck driver over the guy who clearly feels no need to compensate for anything?

I'm assuming that the marketing philosophy about commercials like this is that they are so tightly targeted.  That is, people like me will think that the folks in the ad are stupid, unpleasant people, but I'm not in their target market, so it doesn't matter.

Normally I'd just ignore an ad campaign like this, and write it off as a price of watching television content with a large male audience.  But then I see this other campaign that Chevrolet is running that also features real people giving their opinions in focus groups.



In this case, the point is that the participants always assume other brands are first to give innovative features, rather than Chevy.  It seems to be part of a GM tradition of confronting their brands' bad reputations head on, after "This Isn't Your Father's Oldsmobile" and "You Don't Know Buick."

But wait a minute: with one campaign, Chevy is asking us to believe in stereotypes of people, then in the other, they're asking us not to invoke stereotypes of car brands.  They don't mind making fun of a large part of their market, but then play the victim when they're the ones trying to lose a reputation.

Well GM, you can't have it both ways.  I'm not going to open my mind to you, if you're telling everyone to have a closed mind to me.  I'm going to remind everyone of your continuing ignition scandal.  I'll point out that you just slashed the length of your warranties, and Car and Driver thinks it's because you're having engine quality problems.  And oh look, you're having problems selling Volts.  Now why would people in the market for small efficient cars suddenly not want to buy from you?