The car, the city, the conceit

The way to stop waste from building up in the street is not to enforce a litter ban. It is to change what it is that they are dropping, into something that is not waste, something that becomes productive. Of the many stirring, puzzling and fantastic things that Zeitgeist was exposed to at yesterday’s LS:N Global Trends briefing yesterday (who presented the above insight), one of the more thought-provoking things was the above commercial, played during this year’s Super Bowl extravaganza in the US. It’s a bold, powerful advertisement, and rightly pointed out as a return to the more glorious days of advertising. There is a problem with it though, one of cognitive dissonance.

As we know, the US auto industry, with its epicentre in Detroit, had to be bailed out by the Obama administration. More recently Chrysler themselves thought the problem might be a more macro one of people being unable to drive. As with the initial example, the thinking in this commercial has the wrong end of the stick. The problem was not the global recession and the short-term devastation it wrought. The Economist wrote in January that “The car industry can produce 94m cars a year, against global demand of 64m”; this clearly has to change. The long-term problem though, unfortunately, is simply that the US auto industry makes low-quality cars. In terms of quality, they are subpar relative to other countries. This is partly why the country saw such an influx of Japanese models during the 1980s. The hysteria of Japanese cultural domination (evident in films like Blade Runner) was such at the time that popular fiction author Tom Clancy dramatised the whole affair, setting the Japanese auto industry’s invasion of America as the first step to all-out war in the novel Debt of Honour.

Last year was the first time when, around the world, more people lived in cities than in towns. Ipso facto, this means there will be less need for cars, as distances travelled on a regular basis become shorter. Car manufacturers make more profit from larger models than the smaller ones that will increasingly come to dominate the marketplace. Even Aston Martin is getting into the race for convenience in the city. Making the most of this dramatic shift will be of the utmost importance if the industry is to survive. That, and not using brilliant creative to make up for a lower quality in manufacturing.

We Have (Green) Ignition

Shell and Renault might not leap to mind as producers of the most ‘green’ products in the market right now. Hence why both companies are trying to alter this perception by touting their so-called ‘green credentials’. In the past week, one brand has come off better than the other in managing these expectations.

Though unquestionably adept when it comes to social media – having in the past month launched their products on the latest incarnation of the Sims game, as well as the ubiquitous Facebook integration – Renault has fallen foul of the ASA twice over a period of five weeks. At the end of March, seventeen people complained that the company’s strapline for their new electric car, that it was a ‘zero-emissions vehicle’, was a fallacy, as it “did not take the full life cycle of the vehicle into account… the ASA adjudicated that if the car was charged using energy sourced from the UK’s national grid, CO2 emissions would be produced as a result.” The article also mentions a new set of codes by Defra meant to combat ‘greenwashing’ tactics. Yesterday, Brand Republic reported the ASA had banned a second Renault advert, when one person complained “it was using French rather than UK figures to make the claim that one of its electric cars reduces CO2 emissions by least 90%.” The ASA concluded the ad was “misleading”.

Where Renault has stumbled, Shell has not, with those wonderful JWT minds producing a simple but visually engaging advertisement that immediately speaks to the relative cleanliness and quality of its fuel.

One luxury brand not usually associated with such serious things like sustainability is Aston Martin. But then neither was BMW before it recently unveiled its prototype electric car (see headline picture). Campaign magazine reported yesterday that the manufacturer “is looking for an agency to handle the launch advertising for its Cygnet city car”. The project is being managed in conjunction with Toyota, based on that company’s iQ car. “a large proportion of Aston Martin drivers also own a smaller car, such as a Mini or smart car, which they use for their inner-city commutes or to do the shopping. Reports suggest that the Cygnet will cost around £30,000 and feature a low-emission economical engine.” It’s an interesting decision. Although one might initially blanche at the idea of Aston Martin producing a more economical car, as the above quotation illustrates, it is in fact very on-brand. In this case, why sell to half of the consumer’s automobile product purchase, when you can sell to it all? The model will, initially, only be available to those that already own an Aston Martin.

Zeitgeist is most pleased to see efforts being taken by the those industries with an environmentally questionable past to prepare for a cleaner future. Moreover, who’d have thunk it, but electric cars can be cool and fast (although UK hybrid and electric sales are unfortunately slipping). It’s clear from Renault’s example though that people won’t tolerate a greenwash. Perhaps the open-source project “c,mm,n“, will help.