Look at this F**king Hyundai: Fred Grades Recent Commercials

I watch a lot of TV, and maybe it's because of what I do for a living, maybe it's my deep-down love of "Mad Men," maybe it's something else entirely, but I watch the commercials intently as well.  Usually I do so with a metric ton of snark, because everyone in advertising seems to think they're Don Draper these days when really they're Ted Chaough.  (That's very much an inside joke.)  So I figured I'd bring some of that snark over to this blog-space by rating a few TV commercials and explaining why.

All advertisements are graded using a standard grading scheme, where "A+" is the greatest advertisement ever (never seen it) and "F" is Volkswagen's 1997 "Da Da Da" campaign.

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Advertisement #1: Look at This Fucking Hipster meets Straightforward Korean Engineering

You've definitely seen this commercial during the holiday season; two scarf-wearing, uncleansed hipsters straight out of Park Slope shilling for - you guessed it - Hyundai.  Specifically, in the two commercials I've seen so far, the Hyundai Sonata (a stylish and highly-rated, if somewhat unassuming, $20,000 family sedan) and the Hyundai Genesis Sedan (an upscale, $35,000+ luxury sedan that gets 25 highway mpg and therefore would NEVER be driven by a hipster).

What I don't get about these commercials is the following: virtually nobody likes hipsters.  They're douchey, smelly, pretentious without meaning or purpose, and are unified solely by their complete absence of social grace. (Q: How many hipsters does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: ::exasperated smarmy sigh:: Don't worry, it's some number you've never heard of.)

Most people dislike most car brands as well (if Grandpa was an Oldsmobile man, by definition he wasn't a Ford man or a Chevy man), but sometimes a well-made car commercial can shift this pattern and effectively shift some of the market toward a brand.  Given this possibility, why put hipsters, whom nobody likes, into your car commercial, when you're trying to get people to purchase your car brand?

Look, I will concede that it is borderline acceptable to put hipsters in a car commercial if you're trying to market a car that hipsters would actually consider driving.  (This puts aside the obvious notion that, after spending all their money on organic kale, indie-rock CD's, and locally-sourced vegan tofu, most hipsters are flat broke, but still.)  A Honda Fit commercial featuring hipsters, for instance, would get a far higher grade than this campaign. 

This commercial misses the fundamental point that hipsters don't want family sedans or luxury sedans - they aren't GREEN enough - and those people who would purchase family sedans or luxury sedans don't want to watch a dude with an unkempt beard ring goddamn tambourines.  Thus, these commercials are terrible.  I smite you, Hyundai (although I do like the Genesis sedan).

Grade: D

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Advertisement #2: Can a Bank Be (Legitimately) Metal?

In my never-ending search for authenticity, I'm often extremely surprised at how many commercials fail at simply doing what they were intended to do.  It's like the ad executive or the client (yeah, probably the client) for most companies ends up deciding upon a commercial that attempts to make six different statements - and executes each of them poorly - rather than something that quickly and effectively makes one solid statement and plain sticks with it.

Over the past couple of years, Ally Bank has caught a reasonable amount of flak (entirely from parents of small children, who seem eternally incapable of putting their hormonal changes into context and remembering that kids don't matter to people who don't have kids) for a series of ultra-realistic commercials that involved an adult actor stealing from small children as a metaphor for what other banks do to their customers.  Supposedly the commercials were not even scripted, so the looks on these children's faces when their ice cream was taken from them was indeed real, which resulted in tons of pissed off parents who couldn't bear to see little Madison get her heart broken!  (I always chuckled at these commercials, because I hate kids and feel they should learn about endless disappointment.)

To paraphrase the governor of Pennsylvania, we've become a nation of wussies.  As a result, I appreciate Ally Bank's authenticity, which thankfully hasn't wavered in their latest daring ad campaign.  In it, a metal band wails upon things that they hate (seriously, the first five seconds of this commercial are some of the funniest I've ever seen in a TV commercial), and then ad lib into "But I really love my bank!"  And then hilarity ensues from there.

The best thing about this ad (in my opinion) is that - taking "metal" to its literal, counter-cultural definition - this commercial is legitimately metal.  In the same way that it was metal to love George W. Bush in 2004, it's metal to love your bank in 2010.  This commercial is not for everyone (I could see my parents - and yours - putting the TV on mute whenever it comes on), but for its target audience, it's extremely memorable.  So kudos, Ally Bank, for creating an advertisement that actually does what it intends to do.  However, your savings rates are piss poor, so I will not use you.

Grade: B+

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Advertisement #3: Short but Sweet (Really Sweet...)

Just to prove I have a heart, I've also become a big fan of AT&T's new Samsung Focus cell phone spot.  Only 15 seconds in length, it describes the product, shows the product at work in a way that should make it very clear to the end user how it works and how it can improve their life, and then cuts away to an extremely... well, cute pink cyclops alien that bats its eye and picks a flower.

My fiancee liked this ad so much that she said she wanted a stuffed pink cyclops alien for Christmas.  (This is the same woman who got me a stuffed yeast for Christmas because I've recently started brewing my own beer ... so, yeah.)  I searched the Internet for a while but couldn't find anyone selling a stuffed replica of an alien creature from a cell phone commercial.  But hey, at least I tried!

I think what this commercial proves is that cute will always have the capacity to sell (if, again, it's authentic).  Like any social interaction, a commercial has about ten seconds to bring what we in the research business like to call "emotional rapport" - that immediate sense of, hey, this person/commercial/widget is actually kind of OK and I really want to pay more attention to it.  It's not syrupy, it's actually more informative than anything, and as such it gets the job done.

However, I will stick with Verizon.

Grade: B

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 Advertisement #4: Why I Hate Luxury Car Brands, Especially Lexus

Holy crap... I mean, look.  I get that luxury car brands ONLY exist insofar as they can convince people with disposable income (and just as many people without disposable income) to splurge tens of thousands of extra dollars (compared with a non-luxury car) on what is essentially a means of getting from Point A to Point B.  As a result of this, these brands need to justify their value by essentially appealing to prospective buyers' vanity - that is, you NEED this $40,000 car because you DESERVE the best/you need to SHOW everyone how wealthy you are/you MUST compensate for your small penis/yadda yadda, etc.  

(As you may have already guessed by the tenor of the previous paragraph, I intend to drive my base-model Honda Civic to the ground, on sheer principle.)

However, each holiday season, Lexus seems to push the envelope on this principle to the brink of committing brand seppuku.  This year,  their pitch line on several TV spots has been: "Let's be honest; no one ever wished for a smaller holiday gift."  To disprove this claim, below I've attempted to create a list of perfectly reasonable holiday gifts that are smaller than a Lexus RX350 (curb weight 4,178 lbs):

• Diamond jewelry
• A fruitcake
• A charitable gift in the recipient's behalf
• A Shake Weight
• An iPad
• Scotch of the Month club
• A stuffed microbe
• A mature adult Holstein cattle (~1,000 lb)

Taking my tongue out of my cheek for a second, I understand that the commercial's pitch line is not intended to be taken seriously.  Commercial pitch lines, in general, are not (in a literal sense) serious.  But when Taco Bell tells you to "Think outside the bun," it's OK that it's whimsical and flip because Taco Bell sells $1 tacos.  When you're selling a $40,000 car, you need to hold yourself to a higher standard of seriousness, and Lexus' entire holiday ad campaign completely fails to meet this standard. 

As a result, these commercials have become parodies unto themselves.  (In searching Youtube for "Lexus holiday commercial," I found more Lexus ad spoofs than actual commercials.)  It would not surprise me at all to see Lexus lose ground this holiday season to other luxury brands - Lexus (and its parent company, Toyota) haven't exactly had a banner year in 2010.  If it happens in 2010, expect them to lose ground to Acura, whose "Season of Reason" holiday ad campaign, I feel, elegantly toed the line between "this is a luxury purchase" and "this is nonetheless a perfectly reasonable purchase," doing an excellent job of capturing the current American zeitgeist of purchasing luxury items, where possible, and where practical.

Grade: F------- (Not Edible for Human Consumption)

Political Centrism Will Work. Partisans of all Kinds Are Idiots.

(DISCLAIMER #1: I almost never write about politics, and I think this is with good reason.  When having a conversation about politics with someone, it helps to make it clear exactly WHAT it is you are talking about, and from what frame of reference it is you speak - otherwise, two otherwise intelligent people end up having completely different conversations with each other and pissing each other off.  In the format of a blog post, if something gets lost in translation, it is entirely my fault.  This makes writing about politics risky; however, given what's been in the news lately, and the reactions that folks have had to said news, I think that "the benefits outweigh the risks."  Keep in mind that possible side effects of this blog post include: nodding silently, realizing I am far more eloquent than you originally anticipated, realizing I am a complete idiot, and never wishing to speak to me or read what I've written again.  All are rare.)

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I was one of the more intelligent kids in my high school days.  I wasn't a fantastic student, but I was good enough, and I ended up attending Rutgers (a better-than-average state school) as an undergraduate student. 

For the first three years of college, I worked a work-study job as a front desk attendant at the college gym.  Starting in junior year, a weird thing started to happen: I started to see people I went to high school with, specifically people whose academic abilities in high school I thought should have prohibited them from ever attending any four-year university (let alone a decent one like Rutgers) check in at the gym's front desk as students.

I could have had any number of reactions to this, but the reaction I chose was fairly pragmatic; I realized that (a) these high school classmates, whom I had rashly written off as idiots while in high school, were late bloomers, and likely had a completely valid type of intelligence that I couldn't myself understand because it wasn't my type of intelligence; and (b) more generally speaking, different people can take radically different paths toward the same ideal, or the same solution, and each path can be equally valid.

Taking this analogy one step further, I've come to the conclusion that my worldview (and yours, by the way) is fundamentally skewed toward the biases that have been ingrained in me (and you) since the age of about two.  This doesn't make me stupid; however, if I were to completely ignore this fact, and go about my adult business assuming that - for whatever reason - my worldview is "more correct" than yours, or "more correct" than some huge group of individuals who share a conceptual grouping (e.g., people of a particular race or people of a particular political persuasion)... well, I think that would make me stupid.

I think that most rational adults get this fact, and 95% of the time they implement it wisely.  People who have obtained even modest success in academia/business have undoubtedly encountered many situations where they have been struck by their own narrow-mindedness.  With time, they learn to adapt their actions, almost as if they are "scaffolding" against their own limitations.

But not when it comes to politics.  No, when it comes to politics - just like when it comes to operating a motor vehicle - everyone acts like a goddamned expert.  Even worse, perhaps due to the daunting scope of the problems that politics are supposed to solve, everyone seems to think that the solutions to these problems are obvious.  (As examples, "we just need to cut taxes across the board," or "we need to spend more on governmental services".)  Further, people seem to generally think that politicians of one political party have the "correct" solution, while the plurality of individuals who affiliate with the other party are completely "incorrect" (to be polite).

(If you disagree with the above statement, then you disagree with the basic premise of my argument so there's really no point in reading any further.)

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(DISCLAIMER #2, THE DISCLAIMER WHERE I DO A VERY POOR JOB OF EXPLAINING MY OWN POLITICAL BELIEFS: I am a registered Democrat, and when I vote, about 80% of the time I vote for Democrats.  (The other 20% of the time, I vote Republican.)  I find that this is the case mainly because I align myself with Democrats on social issues that are "must-haves" for me, and also as an athiest, I shudder at the forced values of the modern Republican party.  However, compared with the rest of my immediate family (who happens to skew very much to the left), I have some political views that can be described as conservative.  For instance, I don't believe in many gun control laws - I believe that people should be allowed to arm themselves to the teeth, if they feel like it, to the extent that they abide by the law.  Also, when President Obama compromised with Congress yesterday to pass a bill that included a payroll tax cut, I was so excited that I woke up my fiancee from a nap to tell her that we were likely, as a household, to gain an extra $3,XXX in take home income in 2011.  So I like lower taxes, too.)


To provide a (really terrible) illustration, below is a figure from a completely unscientific "Politics Test" from an online dating site (it's what popped up first when I Google searched "politics test"; leave me alone) called OKcupid.com.  I don't trust it at all, especially since one of the attributes I was asked to rate my agreement with was: "It should be legal for two consenting adults to challenge each other to a duel and fight a Death Match." - my answer on a 4-point scale from "Completely Disagree" to "Completely Agree" was "Agree," by the way - but nonetheless, here it is.  I am a centrist.  Make of this what you will.

Figure 1: I am socially liberal and economically moderate.

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So, getting back to me exposing a rather striking flaw in how most otherwise intelligent adults view the world. 

I don't know about you, but I don't vote for a candidate (especially for President) because I want them to follow an agenda that I agree with.  This is not to say that I don't care about their agenda - I do.  I vote for them because, after making a calculated judgment regarding not only the agenda they represent but also their intellect, psychological disposition, and overall readiness to assume office, my opinion is that they are the most competent choice to move the country forward in a reasonable direction.

This is why, when I hear the President getting so much crap from people on the left regarding selling out his ideals/his "vision"/his progressive agenda, it only takes me about 0.6 seconds to call bullshit.  Last month, Americans voted overwhelmingly in a way that indicates strongly that a progressive-left agenda is not currently viable for this country.  The truth is in the data, and the data - collected in aggregate, with 100 million-plus data points - does not typically lie.

Does this mean that the President needs to become a Republican?  Of course not, and strategically speaking, it makes a great deal of sense for him to point out the reasons why Republican leadership in Congress is presenting "suboptimal solutions" wherever possible over the next two years - politics is essentially a game of marketing, and the President will get re-elected in 2012 if he markets himself as being better than Republicans.  (By the by, I hope he pulls it off: I like the President, I want to see him get re-elected because I think he's a smart dude.)

However, it has become clear to me over the past two years of paying really careful attention that a divided government is itself an optimal solution, in the sense that it allows both parties to carry real weight in passing forth legislation.  I further believe that disagreeing with the previous statement is essentially saying the following: [DEMOCRATS/REPUBLICANS] are more correct than [OTHER PARTY], due to some developmental/dispositional/philosophical attribute(s) that no one has ever been able to determine but I know it exists because I don't think deeply about serious issues and I eat my own poop.  And this, well, I'm sorry, but this makes you an idiot.

Why can't it be that you agree with one political party more than another party, for reasons that you are able to explain rationally, but still have respect for the other party?  Why all the name-calling and generalization?  (More fundamentally, why do we only have two political parties in this country?  Err... that's a topic for a completely different blog post.)

As someone interested in how people behave in groups, I am fascinated by these questions, as I think they provide some really useful insight into how our minds work.  I don't know any of the solutions - I recommend John W. Dean's 2007 book Conservatives Without Conscience, specifically the chapter(s) regarding the study of authoritarian behavior as it relates to modern conservatism, as a useful point of reference for those who are interested - but I imagine insights can be constructed.

For now, I think it would really help America if liberals adopted a wait-and-see attitude and allowed the President to shift naturally toward the middle, because - if you believe, as I do, that everyone is at least "a little correct" - the best way forward is probably somewhere in the middle.  And conservatives, since you're pretty happy right now, if you could go ahead and explain these whole Jesus and family values obsessions to me, I'd really appreciate it, because I don't really get either of these things.  Thanks.