Subaru Wants You to Dump Your Car in the Wilderness
In their latest commercials Subaru tells us that dumping a junk car in the wilderness or driving a car you can't see out of equate to some strange form of love. The first shows some environmentally-challenged dufus driving two days to take his old Forester to "Subaru heaven," which consists of a spot somewhere in an otherwise pristine wilderness area where other Subaru owners have abandoned their worn-out rides. There, apparently, they sit until they rust to pieces, releasing their various petrochemical-based fluids and toxic metals into the environment instead of being responsibly recycled and reused. The other shows someone who must come from the same genetic pool as that guy because he refuses to wash his Outback, claiming it's a "badge of honor" and that he'll "let the universe take care of it." He'd better hope the universe is taking car of him when he pulls out in front of that bus or runs over that motorcycle in the lane next to him because his windows are so nasty he can't see what's around him. And this comes from a company that not long ago bragged about how their factory is a wildlife preserve and how safe their cars are. Maybe they just don't expect their customers to share their "values."
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gawdodirt: I'm not bothered or offended by the ads so much as I'm shocked that no one else in our current sue-happy, wet-noodle-spined, political-correctness-or-death society was offended to a degree that would have put the brakes on the spots. Could it be that our culture is finally (re)growing a pair?
Do you believe that if you spray AXE on your chest that hot nubile young girls will stalk you? WHAT?????!!!??? You mean that's not true???? aw crap ....
At least when I do dumb things, they're not put on TV for millions to see.
Some "high concept" ads work, some fall flat. It's hard to believe that someone in the ad agency or at Subaru thought that they could depict the dumping of a car in a forest as an environmentally friendly act. It's one of those jarring contradictions that just makes no sense. You have to wonder why some young flunky at the ad agency didn't say "um, doesn't this commercial make it look like our customer is dumping this car into an otherwise pristine wilderness? And is that really the image we want to project, i.e. that Subaru owners are some kind of inconsiderate rednecks dumping their cars out on public land somewhere?"