Imagining the marketing team's brainstorming session

[elizilla]

I'm imagining the marketing team's brainstorming session:

"The car is adorable, chicks will dig it."
"Oh no, that's the kiss of death! How can we position it as a car for men?"
"Violence? Competition? Maybe some cowboys?"
"No, that doesn't work, the car is just too cute."
"Stop saying it's cute! Men won't buy cute cars, and no one but middle aged Avon ladies will buy chick cars. You might as well paint it pink."
"I guess we'll have to use sex, then. Yawn."
"The car's kinda retro, how about a pinup girl?"
"Too cute. We gotta have some violence, to code the car for men. How about a rape joke?"
"Nah, the kind of people who aren't offended by rape jokes, generally think European cars are effete."
"Hey, I know, let's have the girl be the violent one. But keep it sexy. Let's have her dominate a nerdy everyman."
"Wait, pinup girls are supposed to be innocent coquettes. She can't be dominant."
"Yes she can. It'll be transgressive! Hip! Ironic!"
"Oooh, transgressive!"
"Wait, how can we get the car into it?"
"The girl can turn into a car at the end."
"Yeah!"

Comments

[khaylock]

This may be my prejudices showing but I don't think Americans will buy cars that small on principal, will they? Which is a pity because by all accounts the 500 Arbarth is an awesome little bit of kit...

http://www.streetfire.net/video/173-top-gear-fiat-500-abarth_198587.htm

[catness.livejournal.com]

I'm in an East Coast city. People *here* will be into something like that. I'm not sure about the huge part of the US that's not coastal or urban, though.

[khaylock]

The freaky thing is that modern small cars are all day comfortable. They used, 20 years ago, to be like sitting on an upturned milk crate with a curtain draped over it in a noisy rattly tin box with an inadequate heater and no crash protection. They deserved the 'shopping trolley' [cart] epithet they had because that was all they were designed for - nipping to a local supermarket for the weekly shop.

These days I'd be perfectly happy to hop in a Fiat 500 and drive it to Scotland because I know it will be as comfortable, quiet and civilised as any other car, bloody good fun to boot, just with a little less spare space...


[Edit] Still too many wheels, of course...

[pi3832.livejournal.com]

I think it's a generational thing more than geographic. People who remember the '70s see small cars as some kind of OPEC-imposed punishment. Buying big gas-guzzlers is culturally patriotic, of a sort.

[elizilla]

I actually kind of like the car. But some other folks I know were exclaiming about how much they liked that advertisement. I felt it needed some deconstructing.

[khaylock]

Yeah, all the angst the US advertising agency went through trying to work out how to get Americans, especially American men, to buy a Fiat 500 Arbarth.... it just didn't arise in Europe. It's a desirable boy-toy...

[(Anonymous)]

"This may be my prejudices showing but I don't think Americans will buy cars that small on principal, will they?"

I did...


-R
(smart fortwo)

[c-maxx.livejournal.com]

A Rape Joke? If they don't want to meet my wife, who will kick their hoonies into the next county, I will have a leetle talk wid them, and then we may have some violence yokes...

was just reading Tori Amos this weekend on her new classical x-over album, and she was speaking [!] of penetrating dead men (composers) and bringing forth new life (album)... Now THAT was a real funny!

inside

[(Anonymous)]

see, getting inside the car is like slipping inside a hot Italian woman.

I think it's a great commercial, and I love the car. if it would tow 1,500 pounds, I'd *totally* get one.

[schmi.livejournal.com]

Weird. Yet another car marketed to men when WOMEN make up the majority of buyers and/or people who influence the car decision even if a guy buys it. How backasswards.

Nice looking car though - it's in my favorite colors.

Compelled

[(Anonymous)]

I suddenly feel compelled to buy a Fiat.

-b