Danee McFarr

ENG 215W, CRN 31247

17 Oct. 2006

FD2

 

Be Patriotic – Buy American?

 

Prime-time television programs air approximately 17 minutes of commercials per hour (UC Berkeley).  Most of those commercials lack the type of information necessary for a viewer to choose a product based on quality.  Ads are designed to seduce consumers into choosing products based on emotional responses.  [THESIS] The use of deceptive and manipulative advertising harms consumers as well as producers. [THESIS]  The consumers lose because their decisions are based on image rather than quality.  The producers lose because superior ad campaigns are effective in selling inferior products, leaving very little incentive to produce quality products.  Eventually, they will lose considerable market share to a competitor with a quality product and a superior ad campaign.

 

A prime example of this deceptive and manipulative approach is a new $300 million ad campaign for Chevrolet’s Silverado pickup truck.  I usually avoid TV commercials like the plague, but I came across this one by chance.  Last Saturday, I was in the study reading when I heard a John Mellencamp song coming from the living room, where my husband was watching a football game.  Lured by the catchy tune, I dashed in to see a montage of captivating images.  I was intrigued by the lyrics of this new Mellencamp song, which was juxtaposed with various historical and iconic images.  It was clear from the song’s refrain, “This is Our Country” and from the tagline at the end of the commercial, “This is Our Country  [Pause]  This is Our Truck,” that the ad’s theme was American patriotism.  I knew Mellencamp to be adamantly opposed to the Bush administration and the Iraq War, so# I was very curious to know why he was involved in this superficially patriotic commercial.  I was later able to view the commercial in its entirety.

 

The commercial opens with a black and white video image of John Mellencamp sitting on a low stool in front of an old Chevy pickup, strumming his guitar and singing the phrase, “This is our country.” As the song continues,

 

What you see:

What you hear:

The famous photo of the “mother of the civil rights movement,” Rosa Parks, looking out a bus window.

Well, I can stand beside ideals I think are right

Quick video shots from the 1960s and 1970s:

A man holding up his son at the beach.

 

And I can stand beside

Children riding their bikes on a suburban street.

Muhammad Ali in a boxing match.

A scene from the Vietnam War showing a helicopter about to land and soldiers running.

 

The idea to stand and fight

“Hippies” dancing in a park.

A civil rights demonstration at the Washington Monument.

 

I do believe

Martin Luther King, Jr. giving a speech.

There’s a dream for everyone

Anti-war protest marchers featuring an American flag with a peace symbol replacing the stars.

President Richard Nixon waving from the steps of the helicopter as he leaves Washington after resigning.

A little blond-haired boy on a farm, an old Chevy pickup viewed from the back with an American flag covering the rear window from inside.

A man’s hand and arm moving like a wave. Astronauts planting the American flag on the moon.

 

 

This is our country

The time shifts to the present with John Mellencamp performing on stage.

Crabbers on a boat.

 

From the east coast

A forest fire.

To the west coast

Tragically killed NASCAR icon Darryl Earnhardt’s black #3 race car.

Hurricane Katrina ripping off a roof.

Down the Dixie Highway

An aerial view of the flooded houses in Katrina’s aftermath.

Back home

A shot of post-Katrina devastated homes.

A black man standing near the back of his pickup.

A long line of pickup trucks driving in a field.

Men pushing up a house frame in a field.

This is our country

 

At the end of the chorus the music and images continue: Two memorial laser lights going straight up from the former World Trade Center site toward the sky; a view through Window Rock in Arizona (the center of the Navajo Nation); four firemen with sooty faces gathered in front of their fire truck; a group of men taking their white cowboy hats off and putting them over their hearts; and a little girl, holding a daisy, in the arms of a young soldier and looking lovingly into his eyes. Finally, a wheat field appears; a few seconds later a shiny new pickup truck drives around the tall wheat and into view in the foreground.  Starting with the image of the men putting their cowboy hats over their hearts, the male announcer says in a proud deep voice, “This is our country,” followed by John Mellencamp singing the same refrain, followed by the voiceover, “This is our truck.”  [Pause]  “The all new Chevy Silverado truck.”  These words are superimposed on the truck’s grille; the camera zooms in on the Chevrolet logo along with the tag line, “An American Revolution.”  The final shot is of a little boy in a cowboy hat looking out of the cab of a vintage Chevy pickup truck.

 

The first time I saw the Silverado commercial, I said, “Wow, they’re using patriotism to sell their truck!”  It was an obvious reaction, considering the American flag in half the shots and the “our country” refrain.  My second reaction was wondering why they used images that could be construed as negative icons of America.  The civil rights movement images are a reminder of the horrific injustices suffered by blacks and the scenes of the Vietnam War and protest marches are a reminder of hundreds of thousands of senseless deaths.  Nixon’s resignation is a reminder of another shameful time in our history.  Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, in which more than a thousand people died and thousands more are missing or displaced, is an embarrassment to the government that so horribly botched the rescue effort.  I really couldn’t figure it out, so I looked to the Internet for enlightenment. 

 

The Chevy commercial I saw is the first of many spots, all with a patriotic theme, and part of a $300 million campaign which# will include print, TV, and radio ads.  The explanation for the patriotic theme was expected.  According to General Motors (GM), the company that produces Chevrolets, “the ad campaign taps into research that shows American truck buyers connect to patriotic themes at a time when U.S. automakers are losing overall market share to foreign manufacturers" (Vlasic). The images that I thought reflected poorly on America were viewed differently by executives with GM’s ad agency, Campbell-Ewald. “The point is [that] every time America gets knocked down, we find a way to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps,” said Gary Pascoe (qtd. in Vlasic).  Chief creative director Bill Ludwig hopes that the ad “will inspire people to think, ‘Yeah.  These are the bruises and scars that have shaped our nation, and we have rebuilt ourselves spiritually, emotionally and physically’” (qtd. in Stringer). 

 

Perhaps I didn’t view it from that perspective because I don’t fit the truck buyer demographics.  However, I do see the logic.  We Americans are tough, and we want a tough truck.  I saw another brief commercial in this campaign that makes that “tough” connection clearer.  A rugged-looking man is standing behind an anvil.  The words “this is our concept vehicle” are superimposed over the image.  A group of oil field workers with the superimposed words “this is our focus group” is followed by a close-up of their dirty jeans and work boots, with the words “this is our dress code.”  The patriotic theme is hammered home with a waving flag filling the screen and the words “this is our proving ground” superimposed over the flag.

 

Neither commercial tells the consumer anything about the product.  They rely on deception and manipulation to sell the product.  The truck is only on the screen for a few seconds and there is no information about it. None. Just that it is “the all new Chevy Silverado.”  How do these commercials influence a truck buyer to choose the Chevy Silverado rather than another pickup?  The patriotic theme appeals to the prejudices and emotions of the masses, the classic ad populum argument.  Patriotism is the love for or devotion to one’s country.  The commercials link this love for country – “our country” -- to love for the Chevy Silverado – “our truck.”  The message is, “If you are patriotic, you will buy this truck.”  The ad populum argument is effective because it distracts the viewer from the reality of the claim.  Even though Ford is also an American company, one might choose the Chevy rather than the Ford because it is represented in the ads as an American icon.  Certainly, one could argue that the Ford is also an American icon and actually predates Chevrolet by eight years.  While Ford is the U.S. sales leader in pickup trucks, it is not the primary target of this ad campaign.  Toyota, a Japanese company, has been gaining more of the market in recent years and is introducing a new Tundra pickup in February 2007.  Market research has shown that truck buyers “want to buy an American truck, because they feel Americans still make better pickups than anyone on the market,” according to Chevrolet advertising director Kim Kosak (qtd. in Karush). 

 

The manipulation of emotions is clear; the deception in the ad is harder to discern.  The impression given is that the Chevy Silverado is made in America.  Even in the press stories, GM representatives such as Kosak imply that the Silverado is an American truck.  While Kosak’s statement is a “weasel” because she doesn’t specifically say that the Chevy Silverado is built in America, other statements are blatantly deceptive.  Gary Pascoe, GM’s ad agency executive, stated, “No other country can build this truck – not Japan, not Korea, not Germany” (qtd. in Vlasic).  What about Canada?  In fact, the 2007 Chevy Silverado that will be sold in America is assembled in Canada (UAW).  Even with a lot of digging on the Internet, I wasn’t able to determine where the Silverado components are manufactured, although at least some of them are manufactured in the U.S. (UAW).  During the same period that GM laid off more than 30,000 workers and closed a dozen factories in the U.S., they invested more than $200 million in the Ontario, Canada, plant to ready it for the Silverado and Sierra launch.  This is just part of the $3 billion GM has invested in their Canadian plants so far this year (GM Canada).  General Motors may claim that the company is American because its headquarters are in Detroit, but in reality it is a huge multinational corporation, with plants in 33 countries and 327,000 employees worldwide.  It is the largest employer in Mexico, where many of its top sellers are manufactured and exported to the U.S. (GM Global Operations). 

 

The delicious irony here is that the truck GM doesn’t want American consumers to buy, the Toyota Tundra, “was designed and engineered in the U.S. and will be built in this country as well,” according to Toyota spokesman Bill Kwong (qtd. in Karush).  The truck will be American-built, but Toyota is a Japanese company.  So what should the well-informed American patriot buy?  The image of an American car, the Chevy Silverado built in Canada, or the image of a Japanese car, the Toyota Tundra built in America?  Of course, neither is a true American car. There is no such thing anymore.  People need desperately to believe in the superiority of America and its products, which was true in that bygone era of the old newsreel footage that the Chevy ad uses to lull us into that waking dream. The sad truth is that America is no longer a producer of quality products; it is barely a producer of any products anymore.  Manufacturers either gave up trying to compete with foreign companies or moved their factory operations outside the U.S. to take advantage of low wages.  Even though Americans want to “buy American,” they also want to buy quality products.  According to Consumer Reports’ 2005 reliability survey, of 31 cars that received their top rating, 29 were Japanese and of the 48 that received the lowest rating, 22 were American (MSN.autos).  For pickups, the Toyota Tundra, Chevy’s nemesis, graced the most reliable list while the Chevy Colorado was among the least reliable (MSN.autos).

 

The Chevy commercial provides no information about the reliability of its truck. GM’s asserted goal is to “capture the hearts of American pickup truck buyers” (Kosak qtd. in Stringer).  This manipulation of the American consumer is degrading to both parties.  The ethical course would be to build a quality truck and present those facts in a commercial.[YES!]   Classmate Brandon Tabilisma feels that this type of advertising has a big impact on people’s lives and that “it can have devastating effects in the long run.” Because they are easily persuaded, “people lose sight of quality and are thrown in to what is socially being accepted.”  However, some people see it differently.  Another classmate takes a more sympathetic approach to marketing and puts the onus on the consumer to make wise decisions.  “They are not lying or deceiving us, only marketing the product as THEY see it.  They want to make a buck, just like anyone else.  It’s up to US to be smart consumers” (Kawarazaki). Both classmates have valid points.  We should be smart consumers, but many people don’t know how to get the information they need to make wise decisions.  Many people aren’t even aware that they are being deceived or manipulated.  Huge multinational corporations spend millions of dollars to advertise their products in deceptive and manipulative ways.  Advertisers, especially those who espouse patriotism, should produce quality products and have high ethical standards in the promotion of their products.  People would respect the companies and buy their products throughout their lifetimes.

 

Closely intertwined with the ad populum argument so successfully used in the Chevy Silverado ad are the bandwagon and plain folk appeals.  If a person identifies with the people who are being appealed to, patriotic Americans, she/he doesn’t want to be shunned by that group because he chose the less-American pickup, Ford, or god forbid, a Japanese truck!  This was very common when Japanese cars first came on the market.  There was a big “Buy American” push, and there was a stigma, especially in rural and Midwest cities, attached to buying foreign (especially Japanese) cars.  This gradually changed as people realized that the Japanese were making high quality cars.

 

The plain folk appeal is effectively used by the types of people portrayed in the ads, who match the pickup truck buyer demographics.  The viewer identifies with the males doing hard physical labor.  If he wants to sell a Mercedes, he show a man in an impeccably tailored business suit.  If he wants to sell a Chevy pickup truck, he shows a man in dirty jeans and work boots.

 

This down-home image also ties in with the patriotic theme.  Somehow, the down-home image has been conflated with patriotism.  Unfortunately, patriotism has been misunderstood in recent years, especially since September 11, 2001.  It has devolved from meaning love and devotion to America to meaning blind support for American government.  People take two minutes out of their busy lives to put a flag decal and yellow ribbon magnets on their cars.  They are labeled patriotic.  Other people spend thousands of hours studying the issues, phone and write their representatives, and speak out against the government’s illegal and immoral acts.  They are labeled unpatriotic. 

 

This brings me back to John Mellencamp and his involvement in the Chevy commercials.  John Mellencamp fits the visual image of plain folk, even though he is a famous musician.  He is from Indiana and has the down-home image of the patriotic American from the Midwest.  However, he is not the “stick a yellow ribbon on the gas tank” type of patriot.  He is a true patriotic American because he loves and is devoted to America – the country and its people, not the government.  He is the brand of patriot who will boldly speak out against abuses of our democracy by the Bush administration. In 2003 he wrote, “The Governor of California was removed from office based on finance troubles.  And yet George W. Bush has lied to us, failed to keep our own borders secure, entered a war under false pretense, endangered lives, and created financial chaos.  How is it that he hasn't been recalled” (Mellencamp)?  In explaining his involvement in the commercial, Mellencamp said that the song is about ”some of the challenges our country faces and how our beliefs and ideals can help us meet them. This partnership with Chevy -- an American company that is creating jobs and supporting our communities -- makes perfect sense for a song that is all about standing up for the working people who are the backbone of our nation” (Mellencamp.com). 

 

With only a few word changes, Mellencamp could use this same statement to justify doing a commercial for the Toyota Tundra next February (both GM and Toyota have factories in his home state of Indiana).  Mellencamp’s partnership with Chevy is paradoxical.  He did not sound like a friend of corporate America when he said, “It is time to take back our country. Take it back from political agendas, corporate greed and overall manipulation” (Mellencamp).  Perhaps he does not think that GM is guilty of corporate greed or that the Silverado commercial is not manipulation.  Maybe he has made a pact with the devil or maybe he feels that the end justifies the means.  “I am also hopeful that this partnership will help promote this song so more people will have a chance to hear it and get to think about its message of hope and tolerance. I write songs for people to hear them and am always glad to find ways to reach a broader audience” (Mellencamp.com).

 

If the trend of deception and manipulation in advertising continues, society as a whole will suffer. Quality of life will degrade for the consumer as product quality deteriorates.  Companies who resort to those tactics will find themselves pushed out of the market by competitors who see the long-term benefits of producing quality products and honestly promoting them.  When that tipping point is reached, society will begin to heal and thrive again.

 

Works Cited

 

GM Canada.  “GM Canada to Invest $227 Million for Next Generation Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra.”  23 Feb. 2006.  General Motors.  7 Oct. 2006 <http://email.gmcanada.com/corpdb/cachq/ pressrel.nsf/ 7a15ac9c7647fb7985256790005e5a02/b64ca67b0e3ec5b78525711e00678d6d>.

 

GM Global Operations.  GM North America Operations.  Mexico.  N.d.  General Motors.  7 Oct. 2006.  <http://www.gm.com/company/corp_info/global_operations/ north_america /mexi.html>.

 

GM in Europe. General Motors Europe. N.d. 7 Oct. 2006 <http://www.gmeurope.com/>.

 

Karush, Sarah.  “Chevrolet Silverado.  GM Waves Flag in New Campaign to Sell Pickups.”  _The Columbus Dispatch_.  26 Sep. 2006.  30 Sep. 2006

<www.dispatch.com/print_template.php?story=dispatch/2006/09/26/20060926-C1-05.html>.

 

Kawarazaki, Kae.  “Ads subject humans to subconscious torture.” Online posting.  20 Sept. 2006. MyWebCT: English 215W.  9 Oct. 2006.  <http://wct01.hawaii.edu>.

 

Mellencamp.com.  John Mellencamp. “Chevrolet Partners with John Mellencamp for 'Our Country. Our Truck.' 2007 Silverado Advertising Campaign.” N.d. 7 October 2006.

<http://www.mellencamp.com/index2.htm>.

 

Mellencamp, John, and Elaine Mellencamp.  “An Open Letter to America: It's Time to Take Back Our Country.” 10 Oct. 2003. Common Dreams News Center. 7 Oct. 2006. <http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1022-13.htm>.

 

MSN.autos. “Consumer Reports' 2005 Survey Picks Best and Worst in Reliability.”  N.d.  Microsoft. 16 Oct. 2006  <http://autos.msn.com/advice/ CRArt.aspx?contentid=4023544>.

 

Stringer, Kortney.  “NEW AD CAMPAIGN FOR PICKUP: Chevy's patriotic appeal.”  _The Detroit News, Detroit Free Press_.  26 Sep. 2006.  9 Oct. 2006 <http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060926/BUSINESS01/609260391/1014/BUSINESS>.

 

Tabilisma, Brandon.  “Harmful Commercials.”  Online posting.  6 Oct. 2006. MyWebCT: English 215W.  9 Oct. 2006 <http://wct01.hawaii.edu>.

 

UAW. UAW MADE. N.d.  International Union, UAW. 7 Oct. 2006 <http://www.uaw.org/ uawmade/ auto/2007/index.cfm>.

 

“How Much Information? 2003.” 27 Oct. 2003. UC Berkeley, School of Information Management and Systems. 16 Oct. 2006

<http://www2.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/ broadcast.htm>.

 

Vlasic, Bill. “New Tune for Silverado.” _The Detroit News, Detroit Free Press_. 26 Sep. 2006.  9 Oct. 2006 <http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060926/

AUTO01/609260368/1148/rss25>.

 

 

Peer Comments Section

 

Jill Dietmeyer

First you need to put your name at the top of your paper according to the 8 pt checklist.

Also in the 8 pt list it talks about the thesis statement generally being one sentence, being arguable and narrows the subject. I found your thesis a little bit long and not sure how it all fits together. Maybe you can focus it more into one or two statements.

"Looking at the ad, it is probable to assume that this truck is made in America. " I'm not sure what probability you are referring to. Maybe use the word "easy or 'one assumes'. This might be an "empty "IT" from the AIP errors, i'm not sure.

"What about Canada?  In fact, the 2007 Chevy Silverado that will be sold in America is assembled in Canada (UAW and cars.com). " THis is an AWESOME counter! Check the MLA citation for a web site, i don't think you need the .com.

Which [This] brings me back to John Mellencamp and his involvement in this

commercial.  sentence fragment.

Now you have to take all this good stuff and tie it together with a more focused thesis and conclusion.

 

Patricia Gonsalves

The only thing I saw other than what Jill mentioned is your title should not be centered.

 

 

WebCT Performance Log

 

Due       Activity  ENG 215W                              Date Completed

9/19      Intro to Paper #2                                     9/19

9/21      Feedback #1                                           9/20

9/22      WebCT: Investigation Exercise #1           9/24 late [OK]

9/25      Readings                                                9/25

9/26-10/6 WebCT: Open Discussions: Pro & Con       9/25-10/6

9/29      WebCT: Investigation Exercise #2           9/28

10/2      WebCT: Logical Fallacies Exercise          9/29

10/9      WebCT: Submit RD2                                     10/9

10/12     WebCT: Submit RD2 reviews                 10/12

10/17     WebCT: Submit FD2                                     10/17