The latest dumbness in American car advertising.

Of late I have noticed that a new rung on the latter of stupidity has been reached by American automakers and their advertising agencies. In a day-late and a dollar-short effort to proclaim their relevance, both Chrysler and Ford have been running commercials of late that talk about how some of their misbegotten vehicles now have MP3 players. Ford's headline is MP3 meets MPG. Whoopdefuckingdoo. Meanwhile, Buick, is running a series of ads in today's NYTimes telling us that their new Enclave is beautiful. They remind me of Jaguar ads of recent vintage that told us that Jaguars are "gorgeous."

It's obvious I have a problem with all this. I believe if you adapted Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to autos the presence of an MP3 player would become relevant probably long after the need for reliability, overall cost of ownership (resale), cost, fuel economy, safety and about 926 other needs were met. In short, boy is this stupid. I don't think the car-buying public cares, or in the case of American car-makers, the car-not-buying public.

All this MP3 nonsense reminds me of a quote widely attributed to Gloria Steinem: "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." I think cars that don't work need MP3 players like the American election system needs another donation loophole.

More on blind ads.

Just saw a new spot by Publicis for Citibank. God does it suck. Oh yes, it looks nice. The music is cool. The locations are stunning, the acting is fine. In fact, it's all so good you can use it for every credit card out there. It is completely devoid of any ownable essence. The most egregious non-ownability is the VO (there's nothing wrong with the voice) it just sounds exactly like Billy Crudup who does Mastercard and has for about 32 billions years.

In all the spot tells you that nothing whatsoever is unique about Citi cards. Except maybe that Citibank customers are so dumb on their father's 60th birthday they don't know if they are Norwegian or Swedish.

Here's my uber point. Saying you're cool is not a strategy.

I don't understand.

There was a time in advertising that calling an ad "blind" was pejorative. Headlines were supposed to impart useful information that differentiated a product or service. I think a moment's look at UPS's tagline will serve as a decent example. From: "We run the tightest ship in the shipping business," To: "What can brown do for you?"

I have been told that I have an old soul. But I prefer, and always have, ads that give me more than an image and a personality. I want a reason why. As I often say, if advertising is like dating, I understand the short-term efficacy of a big-breasted blonde; said blonde may get me to sample her wares. But as far as buying goes, and a long-term relationship goes, I do want to make sure that there's something under the hood, if you understand my mixed metaphor.

I am writing all this because I hate Epson's new "Epsonality" campaign. Yes, attention getting and nicely produced--I would expect nothing less from the talented people of Butler,Shine. But there is no depth, just pangloss. At some point I'm going to shop for a new printer at a big box electronics retailer where there is no such thing as sales help. I'm going to want to know stuff. Reliability, cost of ink cartridges, you know, points of difference. Here's what I've been told by Epson: you can use their printers for scrapbooking and they print photographs. Wow, seminal.

I want more from my ads. I want to know what makes a product not like everybody else's. Otherwise it's all about price. Which is a game that no advertiser wins.

69 years ago today. And today.

On the nights of November 9-10, 1938, the Nazi state perpetrated a pogrom called Kristallnacht--the Night of Broken Glass. Thousands of Jewish Temples were burned to ashes, dozens of people were killed, thousands beaten and arrested and tortured. Millions were terrorized. Goering eventually sent a bill of over a billion marks to the German Jewish community--the cost of cleaning up the damage. The world stood by.

Yesterday our government confirmed the nomination of a new Attorney General who won't admit that filling a victim's lungs up with water and drowning them is torture. (That's what waterboarding is, not some "dunk the clown" game in a carnival.) And the leading Republican candidate claims he understands the torture of sleep deprivation because he is deprived of sleep while on the campaign circuit.

Like Heinrich Heine said about book-burning, "Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings," a government that tortures enemies will eventually torture its own.

Giuliani and Pat Robertson explained by Sinclair Lewis.

"When Fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross."

A bit more on losing $5,000 per second.

Yesterday, I think it was, though it feels like a week ago, I wrote a bit on GM's economic maelstrom, the fact that they posted a loss of $39 billion in a quarter, or as the title of the post indicates, $5,000 a second. http://adaged.blogspot.com/2007/11/apropos-of-cars-we-cant-ignore.html

I think a financial holocaust that magnificent--perhaps the greatest financial loss by a single corpus since the beginning of time--can, it is to be hoped, teach us an
ur-lesson. And that lesson is very simple. The goal of advertising is to make companies appear and act human and likable.

What an odd statement, huh? But I see GM and the rest of the domestic auto makers, I see the airlines, the telcos, the movie-theatre owners, the super-market owners, the supervisors of rapid transit systems etc. as being infested and infected and in-fucked-up-the-arse by engineers and bureaucrats. Ah, they purred, the efficacy of planned obsolescence. Eureka, the reductive brilliance of "de-contenting." Voila, the untarnishable luster of chrome-coating. Such business practices, virulent for so many decades in the auto industry (and with slight adjustments the other industries I mentioned above) have killed those industries. In other words, in-human arrogance (no matter how human that is) and hubris have been their un-doing.

I shed no tears for GM. They've been fat, happy, lethargic or inert, for too long. They deserve no bailout. They deserve to die.

This took me eleven minutes to write. Another $3.3 million loss for them.

Interactive brilliance.

http://pol.moveon.org/pac/loopholecalc//comments.html?registered=1&petition_id=530&redirect_url=%2Fpac%2Floopholecalc%2F%2Fcomments.html&id=11643-7806092-FWA8uO

I have just gotten an email from moveon.org the much excoriated (by the fascist-controlled press and radical republican right) anti-fascist group.

It is very good, simple and effective. It's a calculator that figures what taxes you and I will have to pay thanks to the Alternative Minimum Tax (which is neither alternative nor minimum) vs. what investment bankers have to pay (their tax rate is pegged at 15%--roughly 333% less than mine) for the ostensible reason that their investments involve risk.

There is no art to moveon's communication. No fancy-schmancy "interaction-design." No obeisance to the fad of the day. Nothing in fact compelling at all. But a simple truth well demonstrated.

Logos in the 21st Century.

From virtually the beginning of logos--when colophons were created in pre-literate times, logos have been sacrosanct. You didn't screw with them. They were emblems of a brand and a company and like the Star of David or the Cross, they were Holy, at least to the Gods of Commerce.

In the consumer-controlled era--the age we live in now--logos are more extemporaneous, mutable. I'm thinking of what Google and Yahoo do on special days, replace O's with pumpkins, or whatever. Or MasterCard morphing its red and yellow orbs from, say, baseballs into their logo.

For once, no judgment from me. Just an observation.

It's not about Facebook.

It's about ideas. Facebook might have inside it a calculus that allows for intelligent tracking and ad serving, but that's not an idea any more than understanding that a billboard outside the Lincoln Tunnel will be seen by more people than one in Nowheresville.

Yes, social networks are important. Communities are important. But ideas are more important. It's that simple.