The gas crisis: Who knew it could possibly happen again?

By Peter Mooney, Special to the Los Angeles Times
Shown here is a July '73 Datsun ad claiming that by switching from your "average" car to a Datsun, you could save one gallon of fuel a day. (Datsun later changed its name to Nissan.  I also changed my name to Nissan at the time but their lawyers made me change it back.)
I was a sophomore in college during the 1973 gas crisis.  I lived at school.  But I saw the end-of-the-world style lines of cars waiting to get their transfusion of life giving fossil fuel. What’s so interesting to me about every gas crisis is how everybody seems surprised.  But it’s one thing for the general populace to always feel caught off guard, it’s another when our big three auto manufacturers and their politicians seem even more shocked than we are.

When I forget the fact that the price of gas is unpredictable it has no effect on anyone.  I would have hoped the car companies would be better prepared by now.  Decisions made with this mindset have caused eventual plant closings, large-scale job loss and all those giant SUVs, cars and trucks blocking out the sun.

To celebrate the first major fuel crisis the retail price of a gallon of gasoline shot up from 38.5 cents in May to 55.1 cents in June 1974. The New York Stock Exchange shares lost $97 billion in value in six weeks.

Soon, we’d be in one of the greatest recessions ever just in time for me to graduate from UC Santa Barbara and eventually give up looking for that swell job I thought all college grads were entitled to and took one pumping gas at minimum wage. 

I remember hearing on the radio around that time the unemployment rate was 10%.  So at least I could feel I hadn’t been singled out for humiliation.  We were all staring at a new version of reality, much like today.

So, how did car companies get people to throw away their worries and shell out scarce cash for a brand new car they didn’t really need?  In the 1970's, economy car advertising stressed how much you’d save on gas and how little time you’d spend at the pump. 

I remember attempting to figure out what I’d have to save on gas to make up for the costs involved in buying a new economy car.   The first thing I considered was that my car was paid for. Then I took into consideration how much I’d lose selling my car for whatever the traffic would bear which would never be what the car was truly worth to me.  A trade-in with a car dealer would be like giving the car away. 

Then I figured out what these new unwelcome car payments would be for a new car and then I added in the finance charge.  I decided I would have to drive my new, more fuel-efficient vehicle around the world at least ten times to have it make sense.

But now, as we are in the greatest fuel crisis to date, I believe it’s time for me to look at the whole thing again.  Only this time I’ve got 25 years of advertising and marketing experience behind me. 

I’ve got the perfect tag line for the big three automakers.

"WHO KNEW?”

Volvo pondering, Part 2: What does Volvo's advertising say about me?

By Peter Mooney, Special to the Los Angeles Times

Volvos 2008 ad campaign simply refuses to play it safe.

Since I’ve long considered myself to be a stereotypical serial Volvo owner, I decided I’d love to check out all the 2008 Volvo commercials.  With the exception of one commercial that looked like it was an homage to that crazy Liz Taylor White Diamonds perfume commercial they seem to dust off and run about every ten or twenty years, I enjoyed viewing them all very much. 

But, as in a night filled with a variety of dreams, it’s always the nightmare that sticks with you the longest.  And this spot with the Liz Taylor Gamblers, the film cutting back and forth between one dramatic yet inexplicable scene to another, and the female spy or undercover model wearing Undercover Girl makeup who is picked up off of a yacht by a helicopter in the middle of the ocean to be whisked to who-knows-where for who-knows-purpose is still with me. 

Now, a week later I believe I know what this commercial’s subtle message is–‘If you have no idea what this action packed TV commercial is about, you’re not alone. Very much like you will never be alone in your Volvo for reasons too numerous to list here in only thirty seconds.’ 

But the other commercials were definitely beautiful and filled with the kind of family togetherness, warmth and love so many of us got the pleasure of experiencing right up to the day our spouses threw us out and filed for divorce. 

Yes, they felt that real.   

But you might notice that the vehicles are filmed driving on ultra-scenic windy roads.  I was positive these were the same windy roads used in every BMW commercial I saw when I was working with BMW four or five years ago and felt compelled to pay attention.

Yes, car commercials showing the cars driving on a beautiful windy roads.  Perhaps you’ve seen such a thing before yourself.   

I remember having to hold myself back when somebody at BMW told me they were thinking seriously about changing their TV campaign showing their cars driving on beautiful windy roads because it was beginning to appear to BMW that perhaps other automotive advertisers were beginning to copy it. 

Oh my aching back.  I thought to myself, this is like saying ‘everybody is copying my idea where I use a can of tuna and some bread to create something I’m currently considering calling a tuna sandwich.

Anyhow, back to the 2008 model year Volvo spots.  Apparently they have moved on from their classic safety strategy.  I have read this was the result of consumer research, which showed buyers were not as interested in that message as much anymore.   The research indicated a strategic move to another positioning entirely. 

This move served to remind me one of the things I would often suggest to the Sacred Keepers of the Consumer Research in meetings like the one I imagine Volvo attended before making this strategic shift: Everybody has the same research.  Predictably, everybody comes to the same conclusions. Then we all write commercials to the same new strategy and all of the advertising ends up looking and sounding the same.   

I experienced this phenomenon over and over again.  I would like to suggest to you that when you see similar ad campaigns from five different competitors in any category, from cars to dog food, nobody is copying the others commercials.  These commercials came out of the same research that led to the same strategy that led to what looks like the same ad campaign.   

Advertising professionals are nothing if not superb followers. 

So, if you’re Volvo and the research clearly indicates car buyers just aren’t as interested in safety anymore, you drop everything and wait earnestly for the presenter to deliver the new, updated silver bullet strategy for 2008.  I’m guessing they said customers today are more interested in luxury and prestige.  When I was working on Acura, that’s what the research indicated as well as 'safety isn’t as important to consumers anymore.  I bet the research company is actually recycling old research figuring, since pretty much nobody over 50 is left in advertising, who'd notice?

Now, we’re going to see more fashion-like commercials for Volvo.  We were forced to do the same thing for Acura around 1994.  It’s a very hard thing to pull off. (We didn't.) Then if you through some magic succede you just look like everybody else.

But more importantly, where does this leave me, the now out-of-date classic Volvo buyer?  Me, the one who used, that’s right, used my Volvo with the clean Scandinavian design to tell the world I’m not playing the fashion game here.  I’m practical.  Plus, I don’t want to be killed by a drunk or simply psychopathic driver?  How will I get my message out now to the people who need to know what I’m all about?  Do I have to buy a Subaru to zig while others zag?

I don’t want a Subaru. 

You know what I would have suggested to Volvo if I had been at this meeting where it was reported safety was no longer as interesting to people as it used to be?  I would have said what I often said at such a strategic dog and pony show, maybe we made safety uninteresting.  Maybe if we could go back and come up with some new, wildly creative ways of touting our great safety story and then these people would say, ‘hey, wait a minute! I’m suddenly interested in safety again.’

But now that I think about it, I’m sure everybody’s throwing out whatever strategy they had a week ago and focusing on gas mileage, even Hummer.  So, as the late Gilda Radner would say “never mind.” 

Volvo moves back to Jersey - was the O.C. not the place to be?

By Peter Mooney, Special to the Los Angeles Times

As I snoop around the automotive world looking for interesting advertising stories, I’m naturally drawn to the Volvo brand.  I've purchased three new Volvos in a row.  My Mother's pure Swedish. She’s never let me down. I figured Volvo wouldn’t either. Then I read Volvo is moving from Irvine to New Jersey. Why?

The idea in 2001 was to move Volvo headquarters from New Jersey to Southern California.  For the best in car advertising this is and was the place to be.  Lexus, Acura, Infiniti, Nissan and Honda ads have been hand crafted in Los Angeles since these fine nameplates first arrived on our shores.

But in 2008 Volvo has officially given up on us and they’re moving back East.  I believe it’s because nobody told them that Los Angeles and Orange County, where they chose to make their home and the home of their ad agency, are much farther away from each other on the creative map than they appear to be on the map you got from Auto Club.  In fact, if you saw the creative map, you wouldn’t even think they were in the same country.

So, as Maxwell Smart used to say, “They missed it by that much.”  They went all-Irvine in the county of my youth named after it’s once endless citrus orchards now mowed down and covered with cold and personality free office buildings and matching suburbs galore.  (I live in Orange County again 25 years later.  My, what a difference!)

Yesterday I was telling somebody at Volvo, it’s like you were this family who always wanted to stay at the beach. The family drives thousands of miles to fulfill their dream and they drive to California.  But then they pick a place to stay one mile from the beach.

Now, Volvo announces they’re moving from Irvine to New Jersey as if it was a brand new idea that just occurred to them in an executive brainstorming session.  They state “The relocation will make North American operations more efficient by bringing everyone together in one location, as well as bringing everyone three time zones closer to the Swedish headquarters,”

Didn’t all of those conditions exist before they moved from New Jersey to here?  Have the time zones experienced some major shifting while I must have been thinking about something else? Has Sweden moved and I’ve just been too cheap to buy a new map of the world?

I can’t help but wonder if things would have gone differently had anybody explained to them that you couldn’t expect to get the same kind of creative advertising in Orange County as you would get in Los Angeles.  I do not know why.  For some reason no one can fully explain, the second you cross the border going due south from L.A, something in your creative soul simply refuses to go with you.