Car ads

 First published in Column 8, on the 8^th May, 1991

Recently I came across something pinned up in my daughter’s classroom – about our car.

Under the heading ‘Embarrassing,’ my daughter said it was embarrassing going to town because she had to travel in our old car – and bits were always falling off.

Apart from a door that fell off a couple of months ago (through metal fatigue), the only other bits that have fallen off have been helped on their way by our kids. So what my daughter wrote is only halfway close to the truth – she likes writing fiction, you see.

I suppose she’s only following in the footsteps of the agencies who put advertisements for cars together. In these ads, fiction and fantasy seem to be the order of the day.

Who on earth are these ads meant to appeal to? Is anybody interested in a car that’s advertised as being for a certain kind of executive, when the same executive is shown as being so at a loss for words he can’t even explain why he likes the car?

This seems to be a common feature of many ads at present: having said everything possible about the car, or the company, or the product of your past 50 ads, you now say absolutely nothing.

The flashy camerawork obstructs your view of what’s being shown, like a conjurer’s trick. There’s really nothing there at all.

(A certain bank presented several ads along this line, with people too busy to talk being hounded by a camera slinking behind bits of material. They were very cagey about naming their bank, for some reason.)

To get back to car ads. Why should I complain? They’ve been extreme as long as I can remember, often focusing on anything but the product.

We have girls cracking whips, models sitting moodily in front of a fire on a freezing cold beach and peasant women standing longingly in the midst of burning fields while some dolt rushes past the flames.

On the masculine side we have hyperactive drivers tearing through the countryside at speeds far in excess of the limit, and stopping short of dropping off a rotting bridge.

There are guys dreaming of their first car, behaving like maniacs in front of their kids. Or worse, imitation-Sinatra vocals while various men – and now I see there’s a lady – get stopped in their tracks at the sight of something no more amazing than a parked car.

The aforesaid gentlemen – and lady – then stroll around the vehicle for an expensive 30 secs of advertising time doing absolutely nothing, except raising the occasional eyebrow. (Thirty seconds it may only be, but it seems more like 30 minutes when you’re waiting for your programme to restart.)

Looking interested when there’s nothing to be interested in is a test of any actor’s skills; especially when it has to be conveyed with intensity. When those ads appear I watch the extras in the background – at least they seem to have some purpose in life.

Perhaps it would be less fictional in these lean recession days for the advertising men to go down to the local car yards. Against a background of anxious car salesmen, they could feature a few fellows raising their eyebrows under flapping flags and mooning over cars only the wealthy can afford.

1922 Car Advertisement