What the Hell Happened to Car Advertising?

Matthew Corrigan explains why all car advertising now is rubbish.

I don’t like Star Wars. There, I said it. Of course I used to, back when I was eight years old and a member of the target audience. But that was a long, long time ago and watching grown men dressed as teddy bears really isn’t for me these days. Having said that, I understand that the opening scene of the first one (episode seventeen is it? Six? Eleven – oh who cares) is something of a cinematic icon. As that giant spaceship looms menacingly overhead, it really does make an impact.

So much so that you’d really need to be pretty sure of yourself as a company to replicate it as a way of flogging your wares. But then Ford was pretty sure of itself back then. It was the early nineties, and the blue oval product range was looking pretty tired. The Mondeo was yet to be released and the truly wonderful Mk 1 Focus still a few years away. What they needed was an advert.

It opened with slow-motion footage of a Q8 Team Ford Sierra Sapphire RS Cosworth rally car leaping high overhead, filmed in the manner of the aforementioned spaceship. Then, dripping with Dagenham swagger, it went on to present a montage of the company’s product range. Images of designers and engineers hard at work were interspersed with footage of Ford cars and vans being put through their paces and accompanied with a large helping of their rich motorsport heritage – win on Sunday, sell on Monday. The ninety second commercial was scored with a driving rock music soundtrack, deeply cheesy, specially-penned and performed by Brian May. Or was it Anita Dobson?

Ford are past masters at advertising. Another that springs to mind is their brilliant Rocky themed short for the reborn Escort RS2000. Back then, they weren’t alone. At the 1995 launch of the 406, Peugeot took up the entire News at Ten ad break with a three minute film featuring M-People’s Search For A Hero. It was brilliant. Most car ads were at the time, just ask Nicole. Even Volvo was at it, with an S40 powersliding across the Bonneville Salt Flats. Those that weren’t action packed were witty and amusing (although the Audi A4 commercial featuring the brash city prick does look rather ironic when viewed from today’s perspective). Those that weren’t witty and amusing were memorable for other reasons. Nissan Micra. You can with a Nissan. Enough said.

And then the century turned. Tony Blair was getting into his stride, the Concordes stopped flying and just about everything else went wrong as well. The motor industry was not immune from the millennial malaise and boy, did it ever show. Apart from the clever Honda one with the cog, can anyone remember a memorable post 2000 car advert?

Actually, come to think of it, I can. I saw it the other night and remembered it this morning. It was hawking some miserably soulless BMW washing machine or other and it used – wait for it – a Coldplay track as the backing music. Coldplay. As a mate of mine put it a while ago, Coldplay are kind of a musical Tim Henman. And aren’t they just the perfect fit for the joyless electric soup that dribbles out of the Bavarian Motor Works these days?

Not that they are the only culprits. They’re all at it. Obviously, the fun police at the ASA have put a stranglehold on anyone daring so much as to hint at a car’s performance figures (though they’re fine with the marketing of dangerously distracting in-car technology) but it’s not just that – all of the fun has gone. There is no imagination any more. No automotive joie de vivre. No humour. Nothing,

Maybe the manufacturers just know. Maybe they’ve realised there’s no point. If all you’ve got to flog is a contract to rent a whirring, joyless fridge on wheels which will just about make it to the local shopping centre for you to drink coffee while it recharges its comically overweight, rare earth element hungry batteries, why even bother to make the effort?

Here is Ford’s full corporate video explaining the advert when they still cared about British Buyers,