Skip to the paragraph that begins, "Bright red pickup trucks" for what is, in retrospect, probably the closest thing to real insight here. This was titled, "My Truck's Bigger than Yours."
All I wanted to do was watch the White Sox.
Between innings, the makers of the Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck issued me a direct challenge, the likes of which I haven't heard since my playground days.
"Men love trucks," said the narrator, who sounded like a man that gargles his wife's and foster children's broken teeth. This all-encompassing statement was followed clips of men, in trucks, doing unquestionably rugged things like leaning on their muddied vehicles with arms crossed and jumping prolific sand dunes.
The voiceover continued.
"It lets you go where others might think twice...Long live the truck."
Pickup truck marketing goes beyond competition comparison and actually attempts to intimidate viewers, particularly men, into believing that owning one will validates gender identity.
This advertising scheme is nothing new. The Marlboro Man was the original.
After the realization that cigarettes are dangerous, the general public took a whole new stance on marketing, demanding that it be responsible. We demand that commercials do not negatively influence society.
Alcohol and tobacco ads are cautious these days, but the automotive industry runs hog wild. Companies endorsing dangerous substances shouldn't be the only ones held accountable for their marketing's potential impact.
The way that young minds will be affected is always among the first things called into question when it comes to the media, so I'll ask one. Do we young boys to grow up believing that if they don't get a Silverado for their 16th birthday, that their parents are dooming them to be seen by their peers as less capable, less task-oriented?
It's also important to consider the possible effects of this advertising that never even occurred to Chevy.
Bright red pickup trucks are the second most expensive category of vehicles to insure, behind only bright red sports cars. They are because they are the most frequently pulled over and most likely to be involved in an accident.
With that information you end up with an archetype of a buyer, a certain kind of person who would purchase a bright red truck despite the extra cost. It isn't Chevy's fault idiots are attracted to shiny objects, but they are promoting it.
And they'll endorse antiquated social structures.
"Long live the truck" substitutes "truck" for "king." This patriarchal nod perpetuates an alpha-male societal standard far more harmful than a pack of cloves.
Chevy isn't the only one appealing to sides of masculinity that most of us would just as soon kiss goodbye and bury.
Mitsubishi has a new commercial in which a bright red truck revs its engine at another truck and makes it bust a coolant hose, as though it were losing control of its bladder.
"Introducing the new, intimidating Mitsubishi Raider," said a similar smoky voice. And then I fire bombed my local Mitsubishi dealer.
Dodge has an ad, again with a red truck, in which a crew of lumberjacks pull into a middle-of-nowhere diner, presumably from having worked up a taste for Canadian bacon while comparing photos of their naked wives.
"That's a big truck," says a man inside the diner, with a mouthful of home fries, all the while with a look on his face like Ron Jeremy just sauntered up to the urinal beside him.
Some will say it's all for the sake of comedy. But is it funny that the Mitsubishi Raider scaled the side of a Mohave plateau before staring down the brandless black truck?
There is an unspoken agenda in truck marketing that most would assume we just have to accept as consumers, as if we don't dictate advertisers' actions. Their goal is to appeal to the lowest common denominator: men who believe their possessions prove their manhood.
You had me at: "sounded like a man that gargles his wife's and foster children's broken teeth"
ReplyDeleteI remember this line well.
PS: I am extremely embarrassed by my old Spectrum columns, but I think I knew all along they'd bite me in the ass some day. Fortunately, it seems like the Spectrum's archives have been disabled. Let's hope it stays that way.