A misguided attempt at macho advertising
I came across this ad, in the form of a multi-page booklet, while thumbing through the lastest car mag to arrive in my mailbox (I think it was Car And Driver). OK, the cover's kind of amusing, so I thought I'd page further into it. What I found was the sort of misogyny that might be funny in the hands of the writers for Married… With Children, but it totally falls flat when done by people who think that it's a great idea to put the Korean-built Aveo on a billboard with the tagline "An American Revolution". The stupidity starts right on the first inside page, with bold print proudly proclaiming "Boys play with trucks. Girls play with dolls. Let's start there." Things don't get any better. The whole thing just reeks of ad guys who are trying to act tough, when we know damn well they're not driving pickup trucks to their chest-waxing appointments.
Lets establish a few things. First, trucks are getting easier to live with every year, and anyone wanting to put
hair on his chest isnt going to do it by driving a modern truck. Our grandfathers were not manly because they had a
4x4 with power folding mirrors, heated leather seats, and an engine that doesnt require maintenance for 100,000 miles.
This whole idea that it takes a real man to drive a new truck is a bunch of crap. GM doesnt even sell a light truck
with a solid front axle, after all. If they want to bring back kingpins, then maybe we can start with the Y-chromosome
posturing.
Second, pickup trucks are GMs best-selling product line - so why alienate so many buyers? Women play a role in 80% of
new-vehicle purchase decisions, and GM pickups represent nearly 1/16th of all new-car sales. This is not a position
that is likely to be maintained by pissing off a bit more than half of ones customer base.
Finally, most non-commercial real use of a pickup truck occurs in a family setting. By that, I mean towing a boat or
travel trailer, or hauling a couple cubic yards of black dirt for the garden. As much as us guys might want to think
that we really need a pickup for bringing dirt bikes into the woods or hauling a Hemi engine block to the local machine
shop, this simply is not the case for most users. To be perfectly honest, itd be tough for me to justify having my
pickup if I wasnt a married homeowner.
I guess the real reason this ticks me off, though, is that most of the women in my life have had absolutely no problem
using pickups in the intended manner, such as my mom who had no problem hopping in our familys 78 GMC K25 and using
it to pull our 34 travel trailer, and my mother-in-law plows driveways with a 83 Ford F-250. To be honest, though,
this sort of advertising probably doesnt affect these people too much - theyre too busy trying to get work done to be
caught up in reading a stupid ad.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
WillDaThrill 10:26PM (12/18/2005)
You have to admit it though, "Boys play with trucks and girls play with dolls" is a perfect counter to "Silly boys, trucks are for girls" slogan that women run.
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JohnJohn 10:26PM (12/18/2005)
Get over it Eric, you're acting like a woman.
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Billfred 10:26PM (12/18/2005)
I'll second the Car and Driver source--there was one in my most recent issue.
And yeah, it did seem pretty dumb. (About on par with those GM badges they're sticking on now.)
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Cornucopia 10:26PM (12/18/2005)
Thanks for your cutting-edge analysis, Eric. Fortunately for everyday Americans, these ads weren't created for mamby-pamby nancies like yourself, sipping your Starbucks mocha and slaving over your iMac making 5 posts to autoblog each day for your full time job.
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Matt Keegan 10:26PM (12/18/2005)
LOL. Yeah, so what. If you like a vehicle then buy it, if you do not then don't.
Who gives a rip what ad people write anyway?
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scooter 10:26PM (12/18/2005)
I agree. This might have been funny in the 50's or 60's. Not exactly the height of creativity and probably a huge waste of money.
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Cornucopia 10:26PM (12/18/2005)
Oh, and re: your article, "Second, pickup trucks are GMs best-selling product line - so why alienate so many buyers?"
Evidently, Budweiser doesn't show any ads on Lifetime or Home and Garden TV that your wife makes you watch, you little fairy. You'd see that this has been done before, and pulled off without "alienating" you girlie-men.
So put down the People magazine and do some real reporting for once. Oh, I forgot, it's called "blogging" these days.
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Matt Keegan 10:26PM (12/18/2005)
LOL. Yeah, so what. If you like a vehicle then buy it, if you do not then don't.
Who gives a rip what ad people write anyway?
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Ryan 10:26PM (12/18/2005)
To Mr. Eric Bryant:
I could not agree with you more with your opinion on this. I received this same insert in my Motor Trend mag, ironically I was reading it on the pot, and this insert fell out into the toliet bowl (it's respective home). Anyway, more info than you needed to know, but because I frantically "plunged" it through the toilet and only read the front and though it was a joke from there, everything you said sounds just like what was on the inside of it. Very well put!
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Toneroo 10:26PM (12/18/2005)
I think there's one stat that you failed to mention. The percentage of car magazine readers that are male. It looks to me like this is targeted at the car mag crowd and therefore most of the people reading the booklet would be men. Therefore, how many women are they actually alienating? I don't think that it's the best marketing campaign around (when was the last GM one that was?), however I think you're overreacting just a little.
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paulkastner 10:26PM (12/18/2005)
so many women buy pickups. that is why they advertise in glamor and cosmo. Every time I drive I see all these babes in pickups. yes woman have the say so in most vehicle purchases. but do they drive these products? As an after thought I have seen more women drinking Bud than driving a pickup truck.
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Bruce 10:26PM (12/18/2005)
I saw the ad but didn't read much of it. I get the feeling it was tongue in cheek, though. You need to get a sense of humor, it sounds like. And to tell you the truth, my wife hates trucks now and is afraid to drive mine. She had a Dodge Ram and an F150 in the past. My brother's wife can't drive his extended cab truck at all. If her car is broken it's like she's stranded. The reason women in pickups are cool is because they're so rare. If America doesn't get off this "I'm more offended than you are!" kick, and the continued feminization of its smartest men, it's gonna fall.
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Eric Bryant 10:26PM (12/18/2005)
Cornucopia,
I appreciate your cutting-edge feedback about as much as you appreciate my cutting-edge analysis.
I'd be a lot more amused by this if it was, you know, actually funny. It's so utterly forced, though, that one just knows it wasn't written by the audience that it targets.
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Robert 10:26PM (12/18/2005)
After seeing this post I pulled the thing out of the garbage (I'm a man, I can rumage through my garbage if I want). I still haven't bothered reading it, but noticed the last page is a picture of leather seating for five. Back in the garbage it goes.
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Adrian 10:26PM (12/18/2005)
Cornucopia... not that its any of my business, but what's with the personal vendetta against Eric?
He's just trying to make a point, which I agree with by the way, based on his opinion of the seemingly stupid GM ad (like so many others I could think of...).
Like Eric, you are entitled to express your opion in any manner you choose to, but come on... what's with the name-calling? I think its a little childish and unnecessary. You could have made your point WITHOUT doing so. Maybe Eric's post isn't magnificently reported or thoroughly researched, or does not cover all posible variables, but his intent wasn't to write a friggin' college-level essay!
As for your comment "Fortunately for everyday Americans, these ads weren't created for mamby-pamby nancies like yourself, sipping your Starbucks mocha and slaving over your iMac making 5 posts to autoblog each day for your full time job...". You do realize that, in today's world, most Americans do EXACTLY what you described? There are Starbucks in Alabama too, you know? The days of the manual-labour American are long gone. More than 77% of the workforce today is made up of people sitting in front of a computer screen, not growing corn or plowing fields or dragging hay around. Even construction work has grown modernized, they do less then half the total labour a construction worker might have done 15-20 years ago! On top of all that, in case you didn't know, of the total amount of pick-ups sold in the USA, only about 7 or 8% go into farm, or other forms of "heavy" labour. The majority bought are used by sub-urban households, to carry the occassional load, and not for a job-related use.
So, my friend, I have to tell you that the average American now-a-days DOES sip his Starbucks mocha, DOES slave over his computer all day long, and a big bunch of them HAVE blogging jobs. And they're as respectable as any other human being on this blue and green Earth.
On the other hand, I do give you credit for coming out with the argument of "excessive" political correctness. Political correctness used to be a solution to many problems the US had in the 60's, 70's. Now, its just becoming a big pain in the butt. People need to express their opinions, otherwise, there is no way the US will advance further than were it is today. It will become a nation where people are afraid to voice their true feelings, concerns, opinions, because they're literally AFRAID of what others may think, do or say about his/her comments. That is exactly the beauty of blogs, it, to a certain point, eliminates political correctness.
Again, you're entitled to your opinion and I highly encourage you to voice it, but please, next time, lets keep epithets out of it. Likewise, I expect you to respect my opinion as much as I respected yours, although I do strongly disagree with it.
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Kurt B 10:26PM (12/18/2005)
^^ Tough post to follow.
This ad is nowhere near as dumb as the Hummer laptop advertising piece.
http://www.hummerlaptops.com/
This page is the best.. http://www.hummerlaptops.com/insights.htm
And I quote, "With its ruggedized features Carson can take it with her to the pool. On down times, she can even logon while still wet..."
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Matt 10:26PM (12/18/2005)
Good post!
This stuff is moronic. Detroit doesn't get it. I think it's funny this post is next to the "GM stock at 13 year low" post. "What, me worry?" Seems to be the enduring slogan in D-rock. Well, my friends, sell GM and Ford short. You won't be sorry. DCX will pass them eventually, after they fire more Detroit management.
Anyway, this ad puts Chevy far out of the running for all those Jetta drivers looking for more reliable cars. Jetta drivers are smart, educated women who don't let stuff like this slip. They'll vote with their consumer dollar.
Kudos.
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doc reed 10:26PM (12/18/2005)
Dumb ad, but no worse than the Ford ads claiming that they don't just make their trucks tough, they make you tough too. What idiot, either conciously or subconciously thinks that by buying a pickup he is suddenly going to be "tougher". Sounds like something our president would go for.
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Richard Warren 10:26PM (12/18/2005)
Two words: "It's advertising"
Those two words being said, the fact is it worked, it got people to talk about it. That's what advertising is supposed to do. In most surveys, the ad people hate the most is the one that keeps the buzz going.
"Did you see that Chevy ad Martha?" It was horrible.
"Yeah, my husband Bill thought it was funny, he and his buddies were talking about last night, my sister in law told me her husband Jim thought it was great too, of course he just bought a new truck"
Think of the ads you hate the most that have run for years, in most cases they are also the most obnoxious.
It's advertising
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seth 10:26PM (12/18/2005)
What is sad, to me, is not whether somebody got their feelings hurt - nowadays women are under just as much pressure to be macho as men are - but that libido advertising works so well with us feeble Americans. Even now, some little part of us is wondering which SUV will make us just a little more layable - and we call each other "nancies" when propriety comes into question. When you look at how many soccer moms, lawyers, and starbucks-sipping ipod bloggers own full-size vehicles like this, even at a time when gas prices are so high, I'd say GM is right on top of their game. It's the tough boys - not the prissy ones - whose emotional response makes it work.
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