On Motorcycle, Scooty, Car, SUV, Truck Advertisements

 I hate them.

Now you know the tenor of this post. Stay away if you are mesmerized by the above when you see them on TV.

It must have been more than seven decades ago, there was a fight in the US for market-share by the two behemoths of those times – Ford and General Motors. Perhaps it was Ford that was fighting to gain further inroads into GM’s domination. Or, perhaps it was the other way – was before my times and is at the very best, second hand information.

The advertisements of both the companies focused on the supposed technical advancements, like “in-line 6 to V-6”, “double barrelled exhaust”, “my rack-and-pinion steering is better than his”. On the outside there were some meaningless differentiators like “white-walled tyres” always not in the standard model.

It was this aspect that the company that was second in total volume sales attacked. It started running advertisements focused on the “experience” of driving their cars as opposed to that of cars of the other company. And, it succeeded and how - beyond its wildest dreams.

Then came the Arab oil embargo. Petrol process jumped by a factor of at least four. The focus returned to the mileages (per gallon of petrol) the cars gave; the load the pick-ups can carry; the jumper seat to carry one additional passenger (more people per van meant less per capita petrol consumption); the supposed aerodynamic profile of the shape etc. – all technical. No “experience” of driving.

In the mid- to late ‘70s, it became more technical what with Jimmy Carter weighing heavily the CAFE standards. I was in the US at that time and I recall that advertisements for cars even went to the extent of promoting how they designed even the car door outside handles aerodynamically. I am not joking. The radio antenna was sloped along the wind shied to reduce air resistance – yes, to that detail. One went further, incorporating the antenna in the wind shield – there was a problem though, not mentioned by the advertisement that when the wiper went over it repeatedly, over time the radio reception deteriorated!

Come to naughties and the second decade of the 21^st century. It is back to the “Experience”, be it the scooty, the motorcycle, the car, the SUV, the “competition” to own the most attractive motorcycle to nab the not-so-innocent PYT (pretty-young-things – a complete MCP phrase of the earlier times). The most detailed exchange about the choice of any vehicle I have heard between two people is about “after-sales service”. The buyer knows he is married to the brand at least till the time he would like dispose it off, and go for a bigger, more gas guzzling model.

The cost of petrol has stopped becoming a concern for many reasons, the primary one being the automobile makers defocusing on it. Two, the power of OPEC becoming a non-factor. Russia and Saudi Arabia are playing their own games, together. Even the City of London and Wall Street are outsiders looking in.

In the early to mid-1980s, meetings of representatives of OPEC countries were the opening news items in the evening news – even Walter Cronkite would end his CBS Evening News broadcast with a brief on OPEC meeting and supposedly the definitive state of affairs of the world “And that’s the way it is.”

Three, the automobile industry now is more diversified (not yet fragmented, but there is no meaning in saying European, American, Japanese, Korean companies – look at who Carlos Ghosn was before his dramatic fall from being the head of Japanese, French carmaker brands, such that no one company can sway the market by changing its marketing strategies. They can follow only the ruts in the rutted roads. There can be no more Lee Iacocca who single-handedly (as claimed by him or his acolytes) brought Chrysler out of bankruptcy.

Indeed, after Chrysler was resurrected, it is now owned by Fiat of Italy after being dumped by Daimler Benz (the Knight in Shining Armour) when there were reported cultural conflicts between the managements of the parent German company and its managers in the US. Car companies are changing hands so fast that, paraphrasing ‘M’ in the James Bond movie Quantum of Solace, I might find I own a single share of Daimler Benz (what a fantastic thought!) through my investments in mutual funds.

Such being the global affairs of the transnational companies, a change in the transaction model by a single brand will not change, one can guarantee. Times have changed, and not for the better.

Four, and this is the worst. Despite people being aware of global heating, and more or less accepting it as fact, people in India aspire to buy a car, only to see it parked road-side on the road for 22 hours a day, as there are no roads to drive them on. They just want the “experience” and the automobile companies are only happy to oblige.

Without naming, one brand shows a pack of wolves being scared away by a car starting with no one inside (again, quoting from James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies), tomorrow’s news today. Or, to be more factual, Yesterday’s News Today, so old fashioned.

Yet, that is the “EXPERIENCE!”, take it or leave it.

Damn global heating, road congestion. The pride of seeing your car parked roadside is enough RoI (Return on Investment),

Raghuram Ekambaram