Chrysler won the ire of the Tea Party movement when it borrowed billions of dollars from the federal government, but it may be trying to win the Tea Partiers back with a new ad that largely borrows from the movement's themes.
An ad called "Freedom" for the Dodge Challenger depicts an impending battle in the Revolutionary War. The Redcoats are ready, muskets poised, to take on enemy troops, when three Dodge Challengers zoom toward them, large American flags flying out the window. George Washington is behind the wheel of one of the cars. The Redcoats go running.
"Here's a couple of things America got right," a narrator says. "Cars -- and freedom."
I saw that commercial. It was massively, condescendingly, utterly stoopid. I was seriously offended. I'll buy a Ford if I ever buy another car.
The Washington Post contends the ad, which first aired during the World Cup, is part of a trend in which companies are appealing to the current anti-establishment mood gripping the country, especially Tea Partiers. "People who are closely identified with the Tea Party movement feel very much this sense of betrayal," J. Walker Smith, executive vice president of the Futures Company, a market research firm, told the Post. "They feel very much betrayed by a lot of the institutions and people they have invested their trust in. This creates a situation for a lot of companies as they try to navigate how best to appeal to consumers in this environment." |