American exceptionalism is a strange concept to build a car commercial on. Even for Detroit.
It makes me think the Koch brothers are financing this new Cadillac ELR campaign, covertly of course. How else to account for the brazenness of the socio-political speech?
Cadillac and its agency, Rogue (a group culled from three IPG agencies—Hill Holliday, Lowe and Campbell Ewald) want to stand out and this work does stand out. The ad is effective and disturbing, at the same time.
I feel like the brief made it clear: “Let’s NOT be Prius.” The creative team at Rogue took that thinking and delivered the ultimate anti-Prius spot.
Cadillac is clearly not interested in courting white, well-educated liberals from the suburbs. They want the hard-driving set to get behind the wheel of its electric vehicles. The ELR is the anti-Prius and at $75,000, a slightly more affordable alternate to a Tesla.
Craig Bierley, Cadillac’s advertising director, spoke to Ad Age in hopes that he might clear up some questions that people have raised about the spot.
For instance, some people believe the spot is aimed at the richest 1%.
Not so, says Bierley. Rather than millionaires, the spot’s targeted at customers who make around $200,000 a year. They’re consumers with a “little bit of grit under their fingernails” who “pop in and out of luxury” when and how they see fit, he said. “These are people who haven’t been given anything. Every part of success they’ve achieved has been earned through hard work and hustle. . . . One of the ways they reward themselves for their hard work is through the purchase of a luxury car,” he said.
I appreciate this extra bit of clarification. If you inherited money, or got to where you are today through luck, connections, or a state-sponsored education, buy a Tesla.
I like this spot. For one thing, I admire the writing simply as a pure piece of copy. We seem to be in a phase right now where TV copy is either a string of loosely-knit bullet points or a gush of pretentious, poetry-slam rambling. Here’s a commercial with real sentences. They make a point. They have a tone of voice.
I admire the strategy, too. Somebody on the Rogue planning team chipped out a nugget of insight. A huge part of the reason anybody buys a luxury car is to demonstrate to the rest of the world that “I can have something you can’t”. It’s not PC to say it but, deep inside, we all know it’s true (this isn’t new news, but it’s news that a major brand had the guts to embrace it).
Tying that truth to the American Work Ethic, then applying all that to a hybrid Cadillac (of all things!) strikes me as real smart. Let’s NOT be a Prius, indeed. This is a hybrid for people who snicker at hybrids and the sanctimonious folks who drive them (to demonstrate to the rest of the world “I’m more ecologically attuned than you are”).
I think the commercial makes that point beautifully.
Thanks Bill. I agree with you, it is beautifully executed creative. And I like the idea of fighting sanctimoniousness with smugness. It’s brave advertising and for that, I tip my pork pie hat to the brand and to Rogue. But I am not convinced it is smart to alienate people unnecessarily.
Sanctimonious or no, there are people who might have gone out their way to buy this car, but now they won’t even test drive it because there’s a political stigma attached to the car. That’s what the ad is doing. It’s layering another, somewhat mean-spirited idea in with the already well-established idea that Cadillac is the definition of American automotive luxury.
This is an interesting approach, especially for an electric car. But interesting is rarely enough to move metal. Cadillac has to get people to fall in love with this $75,000 car and the whole idea of buying an electric car from Detroit.