stupid car ad mystery solved

[furtech]

There's an ad on TV that has a high-rotation and has been annoying and puzzling me for a while. The ad is for the Chrysler Town and Country minivan. In the ad, three boys challenge their "friend" to a "race". The quotes are because clearly (from the following actions) the main character, Parker, is running for his life. This is no "race".

Mystery solved: apparently, the original ad featured dialogue that had three bullies chasing Parker to beat him up. In fact, at the end of the original version of the ad one of the bullies shouts to the kid in the car that, "We'll get you tomorrow!"

This is indicative of why Chrysler sucks-- and why I'll never buy one of their products. Their cars suck and their attitude sucks, resulting in suckage. Instead of just ditching the ad, they assume their customers are idiots, slap new dialog onto a fatally flawed ad and continue to run it (run it a LOT). They do the same thing with their cars: instead of making them right, they do a half-assed job of designing cars that they tell you are what you want and will like (as opposed to asking the customers what they like and want). I really wish the government had let them tank.

Comments

[vulpesrex.livejournal.com]

Thank you for explaining this. I have seen this commercial too many times, and each time it just left me with a disturbed feeling, as the drama and the dialog obviously bear no relation to one another - yes, it DOES look like a little kid running from bullies. That aspect of it was so distracting, I never really caught just who was selling the car, or what the name of the product was.

As to who precisely to blame, start with the ad agency. I think that since the selling - at a HUGE loss - of Chrysler by Daimler-Benz, and then the confusion of the mysterious management of the Private Equity company which bought it (I think as a gamble that someone would either bail them out, or that they would tear the company apart and sell profitable individual assets and leave the liabilities under the Chrysler name, railroads and mining interests have had a long history of doing this exact thing), that no one has been paying attention to the business of actually SELLING the product. This was a criticism that successful european car companies, particularly Daimler-Benz, used to make about Detroit, that too much of the management of the companies was focused on Selling the cars - so much so that "Design" was driven by marketing values, not engineering values - whereas Daimler BUILT cars, and customer would buy them without the need for marketing. You never saw a Mercedes-Benz commercial before the mid '80's or so.

As much as the commercial itself sucks - I can't speak to the product, I've only owned one Dodge Van, mid-'70's model - I don't know that it "promotes bullying". Are we now on a kick to eliminate any portrayal of a little guy, an underdog, being picked on by bigger guys, from our media? Half of all the Charlie Chaplin movies would be banned, as would any Mickey Mouse cartoon featuring "Pegleg" or "Pistol" Pete, or Popeye cartoons.

You wanna fight Bullies and Bullying behaviour? Show the Bullies getting their comuppance! Unfortunately, the commercial in question doesn't really do this, and to make it worse, the music almost sounds like a yiddish folk-tune, conveying a subliminal "victim" message.

[furtech.livejournal.com]

Actually, Chrysler makes innovative minivans (the fold down seats are great), but from all the rental cars I've used, I would never buy a car made by them.

I'm not saying anything about the bullying issue, per se. It was a stupid idea anyway-- how in the world did anyone in charge think it was a good ad?? I am annoyed that when they decided the bully theme wasn't popular, instead of canning the ad they assumed people were stupid and wouldn't notice the "fix" (like they do with most car problems).