Rolls-Royce's New Brand Strategy Is To Rehash Creepy Old X-Files Shit

By  Jason Torchinsky

Remember, back in the late '90s-early 2000s, the X-Files was on this big 'black oil' overarching storyline, where there was some weird alien black virus goop that would pour out of infected people's eyes? Well, Rolls-Royce seems to have decided that this is just the thing to sell incredibly expensive cars.

I should mention first that I'm sort of surprised that Rolls-Royce even bothers with advertising or a Twitter feed or any of that crap at all. Is anyone buying Rollers because they were convinced by a tweet? Are there people not familiar with what Rolls-Royce sells?

Are you skeptical that Rolls-Royce would choose an ad campaign that feels like a creepy sci-fi horror trope from almost 20 years ago? I understand, I'd be skeptical, too. That's healthy. Here's some empirical evidence:

Whatever's happening to that woman there seems to be pretty much what happened to this poor bastard here:

Sure, that lady who's just been seemingly vigorously Rolls-Royced does make black goop leaking from your eyebones look a good bit more attractive, but we're still dealing with the same fundamental thing here: black goop pouring out of your eyes.

Here's the thing, though: look at the difference between what Rolls-Royce was tweeting in the middle of last month and the middle of this month:

Uhh, what the hell happened to Rolls-Royce over this past month? Are their parents getting divorced?

I'm not exactly sure who Rolls-Royce is targeting with this new campaign. Look at this video-poetry-tweet:

"Dance with darkness?" This sounds like shitty Batman/The Crow slash fiction. Is there a huge group of staggeringly wealthy emo kids who are considering branching out from posting on DeviantArt and buying a Rolls-Royce Wraith?

I suppose Rolls-Royce has always had some gothy subtext to them, what with naming all their cars after ghosts and spirits and wraiths and shit.

"Transform your destiny?" That look? This is like finding your 8th grade 'poetry chapbook' and wanting to retroactively die of embarassment. Are rich people done with their Eyes Wide Shut-style masked sex parties and are now moving on to this overwrought club-kid goth crap? Is that it? Rich people don't like to talk to me, so I can never tell.

Get a grip, Rolls-Royce. Or we're going to send you to military school.

Comment(s)

Recommended