You probably thought things were bad when Chevrolet’s oblivious marketing team decided the company’s awful “Real People. Not Actors.” ads wouldn’t be going away anytime soon. But the world has a funny way of making bad things worse, and now Mazda has started doing the same style of commercials.
This whole deal is spreading like that gross stomach bug that goes around at the start of the school year, and it’s about as pleasant as that, too. Mazda’s version is possibly even worse than Chevy’s, which is sad in more ways than one—the company seems like it’s trying really hard to become more of a “premium” (yuck) brand rather than the fun kid on the block.
It also paints the “real” people as even more clueless than Chevy’s, which is a hard feat to accomplish. Just look at the cleverly disguised Mazda, Mercedes and Audi sedans lined up in the showroom—covering just the logos was enough to throw these “real” people into utter confusion about which cars were which.
Uh, Mazda, I’m pretty sure my pet cats know the difference between a Mercedes and one of your cars. To paint actual humans who drive on roads every day as less knowledgeable than that is insulting to the human race.
Why did Mazda think this was a good idea, especially after Chevy already tried it out? Do none of these manufacturers ask people how they actually feel about the commercials? Do they look at the incredibly disproportionate number of dislikes on YouTube or the endless parodies that people use to escape the reality of this?
Obviously not. Everything is bad.