Chevy Truck Ad

It's not just me. In a previous life I was a VP (that stands for Boss's kid) of an advertising agency. I won't say that makes me an intelligent critic of advertising but it did teach me to look past entertainment value and try to judge its efficacy.

The Chevy Silverado ad with John Mellencamp makes me stop to watch it every time -- just to see if it's really that bad.

Seth Stevenson thinks it is. Writing for Slate Magazine, he gives it a "D" (I'd've gone for D+).

This ad makes me—and, judging by my e-mail, some of you—very angry. It's not OK to use images of Rosa Parks, MLK, the Vietnam War, the Katrina disaster, and 9/11 to sell pickup trucks. It's wrong. These images demand a little reverence and quiet contemplation. They are not meant to be backed with a crappy music track and then mushed together in a glib swirl of emotion tied to a product launch. Please, Chevy, have a modicum of shame next time.

I should probably leave it at that (the poor ad is just trying to sell trucks, after all, in its own muddle-headed way). But this isn't your basic flag-waving car commercial. It mixes patriotic images with some heart-rending, shameful episodes from our past. And the ambiguity is furthered by the presence of John Mellencamp—a guy who, in a different incarnation, used to make semipolitical statements about the dark side of the American dream. A guy who wrote an open letter in 2003 arguing that the Iraq war was "solidifying our image as the globe's leading bully" and wondering why President Bush hadn't been "recalled" yet. Mellencamp once sang the line, "Ain't that America" with a decidedly bitter tinge. Now he sings the remarkably similar line, "This is our country," and it's hard not to wonder what he means by it.

So it's me, and Stevenson, and Jonathan Last at Galley Slaves.

Stevenson goes on to compare it to President Carter's Malaise speech and ends with this:

Automotive blog Jalopnik reports that an early version of the ad included footage of a nuclear mushroom cloud. Well, that would have brightened things up. I wonder if they could squeeze in the Rodney King beating and the Abu Ghraib photos, too.

Edgy. I give them the D+ for edgy. This could be a series, next the Dixie Chicks then Neil Young.

From the other side Posted by jk at October 18, 2006 8:09 PM