Okay, everyone, everyone, stop what you’re doing. Pilots, put your planes on autopilot. Surgeons, drop the scalpel and crank the anesthetic. Drivers, pull over. Everyone just get somewhere safe where you can concentrate, because we’re going to be identifying the van used on Target’s shopping cart return corrals. Try…
You know those strange, generic-ized car-chimeras you see in things like insurance company advertisements and body shop ads or ads for acessories like floormats? We usually think of those as products of the era of Photoshop, but they’ve actually been around much longer. I think these may be two of the earliest…
Remember about a week ago when we showed you that incredibly well-done ad for a used 1996 Honda Accord? Then remember yesterday how we told you the price got so crazy high on eBay the auction was cancelled? Well, the auction was cancelled again, CarMax made a bonkers video offer, and the guy who’s selling the car was…
Last week, we all got to experience the beauty that was, in fact, just an ad for a used Honda Accord. Filmmaker Max Lanman made the commercial to help sell his fiancée’s 1996 Accord, which is worth about $1,500, and it worked: The bids got up to $150,000 before eBay canceled the auction for “illegitimate bidding.”
I’m not sure what the ad agency Hyundai hired to make ads for its N-badged performance car range is smoking or snorting or injecting, but whatever it is I want it the hell away from me and back into whatever underground chemical weapon bunker it came from. I say this because the commercial made for the Hyundai N brand…
It’s easy to take things for granted, and that’s a mistake. The world we live in right now, with all of its problems and concerns, is also an astounding one in many ways. One of those ways is producing car commercials that would have required a team of professionals just a couple of years ago is now in the hands of…
America’s National Rifle Association has been getting a lot of attention thanks to strange and divisive recent promotional video that’s been generating a lot of controversy. After watching the video, I saw another similar one, where I was struck by one notable detail: the NRA seems to have no idea what kind of cars…
Seriously, Chevy(’s ad agency), what the fuck are you doing? Can’t you see what’s happening? Can’t you see you’re tearing us apart? This isn’t selling any cars; this is selling out our very humanity. Yes, dammit, I’m talking about the “bad mamma-jamma” guy at the end of this godawful “Real People” Chevy Equinox ad.
I’ve seen this ad, from the noted fictional Baltimore-area GM dealership known as Big Bill Hell’s, pop up in our comments section over the years, and I just now realized we’d never featured it. Well consider that fixed, and, as the ad says, Fuck you, Baltimore!
The features of a car that a carmaker, or, more accurately, the ad agency that works for it, chooses to highlight can vary pretty wildly. They can shout insane horsepower numbers or somberly remind you about how safe their cars are, or the novel shapes their seats fold into or how much action you’ll be getting from…
Okay. Black and white. Cool! Yuppies in a park. Alright! I’m on board.
Let me make one thing absolutely clear: the anthropomorphization of automobiles is important to me. I have a fictitious Master’s degree in Automobile Anthropomorphism, as well as an entirely fabricated Doctorate in Automotive Visigenomics. That’s why it’s important when I say this British advertisement has the worst…
Now, I realize that I’m not an advertising executive working on the ad campaign for Mercedes-Benz–those easily alarmed people over at that ad agency reminded me of that. By shoving. Even so, Mercedes’ new ad campaign completely baffles me.
Trying to figure out the ‘first’ of anything is a tricky business, and is rarely as simple as it seems. And yet I keep finding myself drawn to things that may be automotive firsts. I won’t say that this ad for a Ford dealer confusingly named “Ferraris” is the first animated car, but it’s likely pretty close.
It’s the holiday season, and that means that there’s a whole panoply of holidays and customs to navigate, and you need to be ready. The automotive world has a number of major holidays this time of year, and it makes sense to know what they are. You don’t want to tell someone “Happy Honda Days” and find out they…
There was once a time, many decades ago, when cigarette smoking wasn’t just good for you, it was pretty much mandated by the government. To be a human was to set a tube of plants on fire by your face, and we all loved it.
You wouldn’t think that having a lovely, absurdly fit woman shill your car would be a mistake, but the clever PR people at Buick managed to find a way. It’s not really the fault of the spokeswoman or the car, specifically; it’s more because of a trend in modern cars that makes an adult woman in a convertible look like…
I was flipping through a February 1969 copy of Road & Track (my antifreeze colonic lady really needs to update her waiting room magazines) when I happened to see this remarkable chance pairing of advertisements:
