Buy a Chevy Volt and get pestered to death.

[Trekker4747]

So Chevy has been running a series of commercials for their electric-gas hybrid car and in these commercials the Volt owner is pestered by other people in the commercial over his car. In one he pulls up to the convenience store part of a gas station and gets asked questions by people on why he's at a gas station if his car is electric. All the guy, apparently, wants to do is go inside the store and get a paper and coffee but yet he has to field questions from people interested in his car.

In another commercial he's picking up food at a drive-thru and the same thing happens with a driver further back in the lane using the drive-thru attendant to field questions to the Volt driver already at the window, the driver ends up in a conversation between the other driver, the drive-thru driver and another employee sweeping the parking lot.

It's an odd series of commercials, trying to sell you a car by saying your life will be heavily disrupted by it.

 

[Squiggy]

The people who can afford them are probably going to understand it's a joke.

 

[Trekker4747]

Touche'

It's still an odd way to try and to advertise your product, I suspect there'd be a better way to get the information out there than to suggest you'll be constantly fielding questions about the car, which I suspect to some degree is true.

 

[backstept]

Touche'

It's still an odd way to try and to advertise your product, I suspect there'd be a better way to get the information out there than to suggest you'll be constantly fielding questions about the car, which I suspect to some degree is true.

carmakers and their PR people seem to think odd is better
for instance Toyota's recent Yaris ads where they make it seem like the Yaris is the most boring vehicle ever.
"Yaris! It's a car!"
"Do you have eyes that see when they're open? Do you go places sometimes, and leave other times?"
"It has windows that go down . . . AND up. STANDARD!"
"It has cupholders . . . They're like cups, for your cups."

 

[Vulagr]

It's simple. Get people to talking about a commercial, then people will want to see the commercial, then they might want to buy a new car.

 

[iguana_tonante]

Touche'

It's still an odd way to try and to advertise your product, I suspect there'd be a better way to get the information out there than to suggest you'll be constantly fielding questions about the car, which I suspect to some degree is true.

carmakers and their PR people seem to think odd is better
for instance Toyota's recent Yaris ads where they make it seem like the Yaris is the most boring vehicle ever.
"Yaris! It's a car!"
"Do you have eyes that see when they're open? Do you go places sometimes, and leave other times?"
"It has windows that go down . . . AND up. STANDARD!"
"It has cupholders . . . They're like cups, for your cups."

Lulz. Is that for real? We didn't get them here in Italy. Personally, I think that's brilliant. And that's exactly why I love my Yaris: it's basic, no fancy-smancy stuff. Reliable, comfortable, great mileage and low maintenance. She takes me places, and back again. What else could I want? As I said: brilliant!

 

[Skywalker]

I get this sort of thing all the time.

"Hey, your name's Skywalker."
"Yeah, I'm a Star Wars fan."
"So what are you doing on a Star Trek board?"

 

[OmahaStar]

It's no different than any other car commercial. You know the ones, where someone has bought a new car of the X brand, so everyone around stares at the car as though it's the greatest thing they've ever seen. Person driving X brand sits inside, smirking, looking like a douche, while all around people stop whatever they are doing so they can gawk at the most fabulous car ever.

 

[Vulagr]

You guys should read TV Tropes section on commercial Tropes.

 

[cultcross]

Touche'

It's still an odd way to try and to advertise your product, I suspect there'd be a better way to get the information out there than to suggest you'll be constantly fielding questions about the car, which I suspect to some degree is true.

carmakers and their PR people seem to think odd is better
for instance Toyota's recent Yaris ads where they make it seem like the Yaris is the most boring vehicle ever.
"Yaris! It's a car!"
"Do you have eyes that see when they're open? Do you go places sometimes, and leave other times?"
"It has windows that go down . . . AND up. STANDARD!"
"It has cupholders . . . They're like cups, for your cups."

Lulz. Is that for real? We didn't get them here in Italy. Personally, I think that's brilliant. And that's exactly why I love my Yaris: it's basic, no fancy-smancy stuff. Reliable, comfortable, great mileage and low maintenance. She takes me places, and back again. What else could I want? As I said: brilliant!

Agreed - I think this a great idea for a commercial. You can't exactly sell the Yaris as being a supercar, so you've got to take a different angle.

 

[Vulagr]

It is that way in real life, though. If you stand out in a crowd people are gonna ask you why you're different than them.

 

[scotpens]

. . . It's an odd series of commercials, trying to sell you a car by saying your life will be heavily disrupted by it.

It's an American commercial, right? We Yanks love it when random strangers ask us about our stuff. We're a nation of attention whores.

 

[Kronos]

I parked behind a guy with a Volt the other day, didn't feel the need to pester him about it, in the commercial the guys doing that come across as idiots.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I liked the volt commercial where everything in the world ran on gas. I appreciate that they're actually advertising their electric cars these days. The first time around, they seemed to be deliberately trying to avoid selling them.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

You're overthinking it.

The message is that buying Volt makes you a remarkable person.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Sounds like a good way to appeal to the early-adopter types who no doubt are going to be the first market for electric cars. They value the ego boost of being the expert about something. For them, being "pestered" is part of the attraction of the Volt.

(As it turns out, the agency I work for did research about the early-adopter market for electric cars, and I'll bet the agency that did those ads came to precisely the same conclusions that we did, because those are exactly the ads you'd do, based on that research.)

The early adopter type seeks attention and to get it, they are willing to make themselves the guinea pigs for an expensive new technology, when history tells us that hanging back and waiting for the price to drop/bugs to get worked out is the far smarter option. Why would anyone be an early adopter unless they were looking for something other than a good price and reliable technology?

In reality, they probably won't get pestered very much at all. So I hope they aren't disappointed to realize that plunking their money down for a car doesn't make them the automatic experts they like to think of themselves as. But without them, it would be much harder to get the market for electric cars going at all, so we should all appreciate their self-defeating irrationality and egotism.

 

[Squiggy]

You're overthinking it.

The message is that buying Volt makes you a remarkable person.

I'm thinking of getting one for my realtor car.


Write-off.

 

[SPOCKED]

The Chevy Volt -- a silent zero to sixty in ten minutes never felt so good

 

[ares93]

I was actually planning to get a Nissan Leaf, but Volt might be a better choice. I drive a Cosworth converted 1984-85-87-91 Mercedes 190D. It more or less a hobby car anyway. Fast as hell. It doesn't really matter if my ass-hauler handles like a turtle. As long as its cheap to own i dont give a damn. I can get my speed fix with the Merc anyways.

Whats the retail price on these things anyway?

 

[Trekker4747]

You're overthinking it.

The message is that buying Volt makes you a remarkable person.

While the Volt is a fine car, I hate the notion that it makes one a "remarkable person." That sort of self-centeredness is not helping any "Green Movement" that is needed. It's hard to get behind a movement when all representatives of that movement are unlikable. :cough:Occupy Wall Street:cough:

And that's not what I see in the commercials, I see a Volt driver trying to use a convenience store or a drive-thru restaurant and ending up getting pestered by other people about his car.

Me? I'd rather be able to go about my business than be "remarkable."