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Tuesday, April 25, 2006

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Ford Rides Itself Into The Recrudescent Sunset Of Ethniche Self-Parody

First order of business: ethniche is a new marketing term used to describe a niche group with predominantly ethnic features. You've seen ethniches already, put to shameless and not credible use on PSP commercials. Now on an equal, if not lower, level of facility comes Ford, flailing about like a drowning fat lady for whatever thin branch of PR happens to be in reach. But Ford's chubby fingers strip the leaves.

"Ride it like a Ford" is the new ad campaign that anyone used to taking anything seriously will greet with flabbergasted incomprehension. The blogosphere has already given this pitiful and dire pinata a few solid whacks: "Hmm -- does that mean riding with your fingers crossed on the way to the mechanic?" asked a local wag. And anyone catching the latest round of commercials will have already missed out on most of the badonka-donk: the original, now "toned down," inspired the following community review:

They actually said "Ride it like a ford" as the attractive brunette was bending over the tail gate of the ford. That was awesome. Then the commercials just got so annoying I decided I'd never ever buy a Ford for the rest of my life.

My own annoyance registered with roughly the same timing as preemptive war. But just when The Critics are set to pounce -- aha! You pass moral judgment the same way Bush passes military judgment! A-and preventive war is -- armed prejudice! -- it transpires that I have an informed, even hip reason to turn up my nose and turn off my television.

As it happens, any old twentysomething halfway acquainted with the music scene in Los Angeles and the socioecology of its entertainment industry in general can tell, in two notes, that the song "Ride it like a Ford" is as chintzed-out and laughable of a white-bread, home-studio, beard-'n'-ponytail attempt at brown homieness as has made it onto national television. The political analogue is the Gores and Clintons dancing the Macarena, and, indeed, someone named Valerie at something called Outpost Nine Forums has declared authoritatively, in response to the prompt "If you could forget any song...": "Either the Macarena, or the song for the new Ford commercials."

The broadest point to make here, and also the most businesslike, is that if "Ride it like a Ford" is not just an idea of Ford's about how to escape certain doom and total collapse but the best idea, an idea for which its brainchild has been paid more money than I have ever made, then the House of Ford is just as twice-poxed-over as GM -- and GM smells like a zombie locked in a hothouse. It is an ominous sign of how badly the U.S. auto industry is failing that not even a resort to the cachet of thongs and low-riders can be done well, or even effectively. Jaguar's cokeheaded appropriation of lecherous beauty, the "Gorgeous" campaign, was a similar failure. At least it was a bejeweled turd.

James G. Poulos is the Postmodern Conservative.

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posted by James G. Poulos at 12:26 PM