Gastbeitrag: Ad battle over American values

A few years back, as I watched the world of marketing grow increasingly chaotic, I was struck by the notion that I was witnessing „the story wars“. Instead of fighting over who’s got the best product or service, the most successful brands fight over who gets to create the cultural stories we all live by. I was so taken with this idea, I wrote a book about it.

Since writing Winning the Story Wars, I’m constantly asked to point out where the latest skirmishes are breaking out. The question often comes in the form of a challenge: „Brands fighting for control of our stories? Come on, show me where it’s happening.“

Well, an overt and bizarre story war has just erupted between GM and Ford – and it’s generating a tremendous amount of buzz on both sides. From its layer upon layer of spoof humor to its genesis in a wholly unrelated viral video, this fight is a unique product of today’s media marketplace. But the underlying story of America these brands are wrestling over is a pure throwback to the era of Don Draper. Untangling the tale tells us much about where marketing – and our society – is heading.

The battle began with this Cadillac Superbowl ad.

Watch this smarmy white guy tell you that America is great because we work hard so we can get money to spend it on the best stuff and you’ll have one of three reactions: „Hell yeah!“ „WTF?“ or a queasy confusion.

The first two reactions take the campaign at face value. If you believe Cadillac wanted to be taken seriously with this ad, you’ll think that it’s pushing the story that the two best things in the world are: 1) America and 2) cool stuff.

It’s a story that built America’s national identity for decades but when it comes to advertising, it has fallen out of favor in recent years – just watching it feels so 1980s. If you’re still living that story, as many enthusiastic consumers are, it’s a breath of fresh air. Welcome back blatant consumerism. Take that PC police.

Meanwhile, those of us who are clued into the dark side of rampant consumerism – how it leads to depression, drives ecological demise and replaces community values with individualistic ones – are likely to get up out of our seats and shake our fists, or perhaps delight in Ford’s snarky response.

Watch this earnest African American woman tell you that America is great because we work together and fight for what really matters, which is not stuff.

Ready to choose sides? Not so fast.

Consider the third reaction, the queasy confusion that will be felt by anyone who has been paying attention to advertising for some time. The debate isn’t as simple as it may seem.

Consider this: In making this ad, Ford is spoofing a brand that was already spoofing itself while also spoofing a popular internet meme which itself was a spoof of a now-dead style of broadcast advertising. Lost? You should be. But tracing this winding path back is a virtual master class in the development of storytelling in marketing.

Let’s start at the beginning: in the halcyon days of the 1950s, when consumerism and Madison Avenue were young. These were the days when Cadillac first built its brand as the quintessential American status symbol. Ads like this one could simply state that status, sophistication, even success could be purchased by buying an automobile.

And in those simpler times, the public believed it. Cadillac became synonymous with taste and American values. And through these new cultural stories, consumerism became the American way.

Then, in 1960, Volkswagen came along with the first real spoof ad, exposing this story of instant status as ridiculous and forcing Cadillac to create far more subtle messaging. The „Think Small“ ads began the creative revolution in advertising by smacking Cadillac in the face with the proclamation that status is overrated and a car is just a car.

It suddenly became terribly gauche for Cadillac to promise the kind of lifestyle we saw them selling in this year’s Superbowl ad. The brand’s marketers had to hint at it, imply it, but never quite say it. But they must have been dying to do so.

The sentiment behind the Superbowl ad was essentially simmering under the surface as BMW and Audi and Mercedes created far more subtle brands that overtook Cadillac as symbols of luxury. But how to create this ad without it feeling laughable?

More than 40 years after abandoning the consume-at-all-costs approach, Cadillac’s marketing team saw this:

This wildly viral ad spoofs the overblown, overconfident, ego-driven marketing of the early broadcast-era. People went crazy for this ad because, just like the VW ad, it beautifully spoofed all the stupid advertising we’ve been forced to endure for decades.

And so Cadillac, the ultimate straight man of broadcast era and the original victim of spoof marketing, decided to spoof Dollar Shave Club’s spoof of the straight men of the broadcast era. All this spoofing would give the brand the cover it needed to bring back that old story it had been dying to tell. Tongue firmly planted in cheek, the marketers came out and said it: Cadillac is again the ultimate status symbol. Except now, status is sort of a joke – maybe.

It all reminds me of the old Simpsons episode where one teenager turns to another and says: „This concert is awesome.“ The other says: „Are you being ironic?“ To which the first replies ruefully: „I don’t even know anymore.“ That seems to be the state of modern storytelling.

By the time Ford got around to spoofing Cadillac’s spoof, the entire battle over this key cultural story – the story of stuff making us happy – had become a maze of self-reference and pointless arguments about who was and who wasn’t to be taken seriously.

But a funny thing happened as the brands battled it out: Americans actually chose sides.

Just when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has sent us yet another dire warning about the consequences of burning fossil fuels, when consumption is driving us off a cliff and when big American automakers are finally mainstreaming electric cars (that is, after all, what these ads were ultimately about), the brawl over this story has never been more important.

Why will we buy more efficient vehicles? To have cooler stuff? To express our values? Both? These ads will, in part, help us decide. Once again, all joking aside, our core cultural stories are being battled out in the marketplace. The story wars continue.

Jonah Sachs is the CEO of branding agency Free Range Studios, and author of Winning the Story Wars: Why Those Who Tell (and Live) the Best Stories Will Rule the Future