When corporations spend big money on advertising, they target that empty spot in men’s and women’s hearts that might just be filled perfectly with the product or experience on offer.
Of course, in a consumerist society like ours, the most effective ads don’t simply aim to fill an empty space — but to create the space itself.
You didn’t know, for example, that your middle-aged hair could look silky and shiny again, as it did in your youth, if you could just get your hands on that hair dryer that emits negative ions and reduces frizz. More importantly, the TV ad suggested the possibility of a better life, one in which you are filled with the self-confidence of a woman with gorgeous hair, at ease in any social situation: a new space to be filled.
In short, ads are aspirational, and only work if they are touching some deep and universal chord in the human psyche. A woman’s desire to be beautiful, for example, is universal, and there are very few, if any, women who have lost the attractive physical characteristics of youth without regret. Ergo the expensive hairdryer in my bathroom cabinet (which is ionic but doesn’t seem to have any magical qualities that reduce frizz).
Some ads work entirely on mood and atmosphere, saying almost nothing about the product but simply allying it to the vision of a noble, shared ideal. In 1971, Coca-Cola released one of the world’s most famous commercials: “I’d Like to Buy the World A Coke,” in which young people of assorted races and national origins stand on a hilltop, each holding a Coke and singing in harmony.
The ad was a phenomenal success. It spoke directly to a culture enraptured by the idea of peace as an urgent possibility, one that depended on idealistic youth wresting control from the elders who had dragged the world through two world wars and now fighting painfully but halfheartedly against communism in the Far East. The effervescent sweetness of Coca-Cola was offered, like peace, as something that every corner of the world was thirsting for and could enjoy.
Recently the car companies Jaguar and Volvo have regaled us with two very different commercials, which similarly seek to strike an attitude or paint a vision of the good life, and wrap them around their brand. For Jaguar this has been described as a “Bud Light” moment, referring to the episode in which Budweiser used a man who dresses as a woman, Dylan Mulvaney, to promote their beer. The ad, all vivid pinks and shocking hair-dos, no cars, is all about transgression, or the demolition of boundaries around sex and personal appearance. It reminds me of nothing so much as a Cirque du Soleil set, with its colorful dystopic feel (although Jaguar’s man in an orange tutu would be a bridge too far even for that circus company).
The vision they offer consumers is one with a dead end, when you consider that the thriving of future generations depends on men and women doing the old-fashioned, natural, lovely thing: marrying and having children. That might be why the ad has been roundly denounced online as unabashedly woke (and why Jaguar’s stock has since dropped).
Volvo’s long Instagram ad, meanwhile, has garnered rave reviews and assurances of affection for the brand itself.
Released around the same time as Jaguar’s, it begins with a man telling his mother about his girlfriend’s pregnancy. He talks about his dreams and hopes, his feelings of trepidation at the thought of raising a daughter. Interwoven scenes pull at the viewer’s heart, of the mother in labor, and a little girl in spectacles brushing her teeth.
“I just want to do the right thing,” he says, and “I think she might be the reason we tie the knot,” and “One day I’m going to have to let her go.”
At the critical moment, a Volvo automatically brakes when about to hit the newly pregnant mother as she crosses the street. All the glorious benedictions of family, fatherhood, of love that forgets itself entirely, saved by a car company that declares in large lettering, that it is “For Life.”
The Volvo ad succeeds like the old Coca Cola one because it aims for spaces in our hearts which do, in fact, exist, and that we are universally longing to fill. One is the space for peace, without which the world is a tragic mess and our existence is bleak. Another is the space for hope in a life of deep meaning and the irreplaceable bonds of family love. No, fizzy drinks and cars can’t deliver what we need, but they are smart companies that present to us our prettiest aspirations, and tell us that their brand also embraces what we long for.