In this new ad for Buick, we see people who have bought new Buicks confuse
their friends (who know they’ve bought a Buick) by showing up in a nice car.
Um, I’m not so sure the best advertising strategy is to say
their new products don’t suck nearly as badly as their older ones did, but if
that’s the direction they want to go in, um, okay… (As the title of this commercial states: “Hmm.”)
It is true that many American cars were pretty lame excuses
for automobiles from around the mid 1970s until recently, so this strategy
might work to get some interest for their cars after all by admitting the
previous models were not so great due to laziness, overprotection by Congress
(due to lobbying), cutting corners, mandates to use up their stock of old parts
(which is exactly what the current GM ignition key recalls are all about:
following old protectionist penny-pinching bad habits), etc.
But there’s just something about people in a Buick ad
essentially saying: “I thought you bought a piece-of-sh!t Buick, and I don’t
see a piece-of-sh!t car, so where are you?” that does not exactly inspire
confidence in Buicks. But maybe that’s just me. (You know, most American cars
were beautiful, cool, awesome, etc., from the early days until the early 1970s,
so instead of insulting their brand by maligning all their previous cars, why
not say instead that their new cars bring back the glory days of Buick, back
when they were beautiful? That would essentially do the same thing
strategy-wise, but without insulting the brand as undesirable. See what I
mean?)
Here’s the questionable car commercial:
And here are some old Buicks (These are definitely some gorgeous
cars! An ad for new Buicks could show these and then show their new cars and
say they’re keeping up the tradition of beautiful car design. Wouldn’t that work better for making Buicks seem desirable than this ad they’re currently running?):
