Toyota is not playing nice!

Today I will be talking about a campaign that has got my blood boiling: the Toyota Venza campaign. Here is one of the commercials playing every few minutes on tv and here is the other.

It is perfectly ok to decide to target a specific age group for a product, as Toyota is clearly doing in this campaign. However, you should never (almost never) do it at the expense of another age group. Toyota is clearly making fun of a generation, a pretty large one at that. You can target an age group while still leaving the others the option to buy. This alienates a sector of the market, not just for this one car but for all their products. Why am I going to go buy a car from a company that thinks my generation is a joke. This ad makes me defensive and does not leave me with happy feelings towards Toyota.

My lease is over in a few months and you can be sure that I will not be checking out any Toyotas!

For the big companies out there your overall brand name is more important that just one product. Don't ruin your reputation just to push one car.

Oh so much wrong with this

I couldn't find the exact ad but here is one from the same campaign brought to us by Cadillac.

The campaign uses a discussion on windshield wipers to demonstrate that Cadillac builds quality cars. They have thought of everything, even making sure the windshield is strong because when you are going 190mph "a simple raindrop becomes a powerful force," or at 190mph "normal" windshield wipers could be ripped off a car.

I can see what they were aiming for but honestly all I could think about during the entire commercial was "who is driving their Cadillacs at 190mph and they should probably not drive that fast in the rain."

If all you can say about your car is that your windshield wipers will stay down at 190mph, maybe you should rethink things.

Thanks for reading!

Let's cover the page in ads

When you are a respectable news organization, do not do this. Actually, no one should do this! I Could't believe my eyes when I logged on to CNN and saw this catastrophe. Wallpapering a website with an ad doesn't make me want to click on the ad, it makes me want to run in the opposite direction. I only stayed on the page long enough to take a picture and then I was out of there. And you know what I can't remember what the ad is for!

Moral of the story: if it hurts to look at, I'm not going to look at it!