June 2023
Perceivings
Alan Dean Foster

Mind-Melds of the Motor Men

Our first television was an Emerson. Black-and-white, of course, modest-sized screen, huge cabinet made of blonde wood. At the age of five and earlier I remember watching Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, Space Patrol, Science Fiction Theatre, The Kate Smith Hour (wait, how did that slip in there?), Howdy Doody and many more in our apartment in New York.

I also remember my first car commercial. It was for an Oldsmobile. I remember it not because I particularly cared about the car, but because it had a chrome rocket hood ornament. At that age I knew nothing about cars, but I loved rockets.

As a rough calculation I estimate that in my three-quarters of a century-plus I have been exposed to somewhere between 14 and 16 thousand TV car commercials. Not a single one ever induced me to buy, or even to look at, a particular car.

Am I alone in this? Despite polls and surveys, are all the hundreds of millions spent on marketing that new pickup or SUV nothing more than a mutually reinforcing pipe dream of advertising agencies and automakers?

When you look for a new car or truck, what besides price is important to you? I grew up under the impression that it was reliability, features, warranty, cost of options you wanted, ease and cost of repair and, to a certain extent (the younger you were, the more important this), looks.

For years I tried to reconcile these requirements with what I saw in television car ad. Little about reliability. Maybe a mention of a feature or two. Warranty, never (but becoming more common now). Cost of options? Never mentioned in ads. What the hell did “standard equipment” mean, anyway? Tires and an engine? Ease and cost of repair? Never mentioned. Looks — yes, TV ads focused on that, and with good reason. Everything else I mentioned can be quantified, while appearance is entirely subjective.

Unable to scarcely mention anything besides looks, since the dawn of television advertisers have focused on appearance. Because when you strip away the exterior, most cars and small trucks looked pretty much the same (kind of like humans). That’s not as true since the introduction of EVs, but they’re not all that much different once you get past the propulsion system.

Rectangular body, four wheels, doors. That’s why advertisers  have focused on what's really the most subjective aspect of a vehicle. And that’s why auto manufacturers have for decades worked to “change” their models every two or three years while the insides stay largely the same. So much work to convince you that this year’s model is really a “new” car.

But there is only so much you can do to convince potential buyers they are seeing something different. We don’t get a straightforward front, rear, and side view of a car parked on a street. We see it zooming down Pacific Coast Highway through Big Sur. Because that’s supposed to impress a potential buyer in Poughkeepsie. We see pickup trucks thundering through primeval forests (while scaring the local wildlife to death) when hardly any buyer is going to actually do that. I’d like to see a commercial featuring a pickup negotiating potholes in Chicago. Wouldn’t that be a more realistic sales video?

Then there are all the overhead shots of cars and pickups zooming down deserted beaches. Huh? First of all, if the beach is that deserted, you wouldn’t want to risk speeding down it for fear of getting stuck. And if it wasn’t deserted, you couldn’t speed for fear of running over beachgoers. Not to mention drawing the attention of every policeman in the vicinity.

Pickup commercials are especially egregious. I’ve seen new, astonishingly spotless pickups in commercials pulling loads of logs, rocks, construction equipment, everything but bogged-down aircraft. How many buyers are actually going to use their trucks for this kind of super-heavy work? And among those that might, how many potential buyers are there? I guess showing a family hauling groceries and maybe a lawnmower would be too realistic.

I’m sure that there are commercials showing cars and trucks driving around on Mars. They’d be just as realistic as what we see every night on television.

My favorites are the current saturation commercials featuring a moronic husband in love with his Toyota. I can’t help but wonder if the idea for these originated in Japan, where quiz shows are notorious for humiliating contestants. Or maybe this is how Japanese car executives see American buyers. I do hope the actor featured in these travesties is well paid. In real life, his ‘wife’ in the commercials could sue for spousal abuse. That, of course, is plainly what sells cars.

I can’t get angry about such absurdities anymore. But I can tell you that I have never, ever met someone who told me that they saw a particular car commercial and that convinced them to go out and buy a certain vehicle. What did persuade them was doing their own research: talking to friends, neighbors, and relatives, and going over a potential purchase in person and in detail.

Boring, I know. Worse, it doesn’t sell advertising.

Prescott resident Alan Dean Foster is the author of 130 books. Follow him at AlanDeanFoster. com.