Prepare yourself for the exact same car commercial you’ve seen a dozen times before.
It’s kind of ironic, actually. The purpose of this ad is to tell the viewer that the new Chevrolet Malibu is a commercial based around the idea that the Chevrolet Malibu is new and better than ever. Yet by doing so, they follow the exact same guidelines of seemingly almost every other car commercial ever.
Allow me to demonstrate with a description of my own new car, the Mitchell NewCar. The commercial opens on a road winding through the mountains, driven by a young, handsome man, giving a slight smile as he winds his way towards the sunset. Soft but dramatic music builds in the background. The music gains volume as a deep soothing voice over describes how “with ___ horsepower and a ___ engine, the Mitchell NewCar is safer and smoother than ever before. Reinvent yourself in the NewCar”, and the scene changes to winding through the city streets. The music comes to a climax as the car drives past the sun or the ocean or a house or something, and then the screen cuts to my logo.
It seems like, with a few exceptions, car commercials are either this, or no voice-over on desert roads, or a truck smashing through snow-drifts or mud or something. Except every now and then, all automobile commercials are telling me the exact same thing. We are a good car, the best car, even better than anything else we made before, and definitely way better than our competitors. Buy us.
What this means is that I am now dead to this method of advertising. Instead of showing me that this is a good car, I am left feeling that it’s a mediocre car. If I didn’t have to check the name earlier so that I could put it into this post, I wouldn’t even remember what it was called.
I suppose my final conclusion is that this does not work well anymore. Car companies will need something new if they want to convince me that their car is good.
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