Reported in this issue: "WV Rethinks Its High-Testosterone Ads". The actual billboard ad is shown below.
The outdoor ad was created by Miami-based agency CreativeOndemanD (sic), and according to Daniel Marrero, creative director for the agency, "We wanted something that broke out of the mold and carried the connotation of being strong and gutsy."
It didn't work out that way. Volkeswagen had to issue emergency orders to take down the billboards in three cities after they quickly generated a firestorm in Cuban-dominated Miami. "In English, Turbo-Balls might not sound so offensive," said Luis Perez Tolon, to Wall Street Journal reporter, Miriam Jordan, "but in the Spanish-speaking community, it will always have a vulgar connotation." Senor Perez Tolon is an instructor at Miami-Dade College and supervises a writing program for Spanish-speaking network, Telemundo.
Okay... time to take the gloves off. Time to tell it as I, an advertising veteran of nearly a half century, observe the advertising industry today.
Previous commentaries of mine have alluded to what I will say below. I've danced around the edges of the issue of immaturity in advertising, but now the time has arrived to confront it, and if I am lucky, perhaps contribute something to destroy it.
I had a professional-supplier relationship with one of the best ad agencies in the business. Located in Syracuse, NY, the Mark Russell & Associates agency was (and is) the epitome of polish and class. It's also the largest billing agency in Upper New York State. It can be stated, unequivocally, that Mark Russell's account people would have never - ever! - let the Volkeswagen billboard ad out of the creative oven. The advertisement would have been done away with and never allowed to see the light of day. Why? Because, as I remember the personnel within Mark Russell & Associates... I associate them with the word maturity.
T he same can be said for the ad agency I started my career with, Barlow Advertising. Ditto for the most sophisticated advertsing and graphics agency going in the Central New York area during the 1960's - 1990's, Cleary Graphics; owned, operated and 'hands-on' participated in by the suave and poised Frank Cleary, the man who brought the David Ogilvy touch to Syracuse, and did it with class, style and maturity. (There's that word again.)
T here needs be no more proof tendered, for myself, to come to the conclusion that today's advertising agencies are becoming more and more staffed by immature, self-indulged people who actually labor under the delusion that what they have to offer the advertising industry is of any importance. The Volkswagen advertising campaign for the GT1 2006 is all the evidence anyone needs to come to the same conclusion.
Wouldn't you think that if a manufacturer, and its agency, was determined to appeal to a market representing a different race, religion, or nationality, that there would FIRST take place marketing research? The kind of stuff that's covered under the premise of, "Getting to know you? Getting to know our product's market?"
Just a modicum of research and observation would have told the heads at CreativeOndemandD there's more to the Hispanic community that meets the stereotypes and prejudices of the non-Hispanic beholder. A competent market research observer would have picked on the single graphic symbol displayed by both men and women in the Spanish-speaking world: the Cross. The shrewd observer would have noticed that many of the cars driven by those young men with cojones carry graphics of Jesus, or the Virgin, that leave no mistake that despite their portrayed machismo, underneath it all, there is in the young men the deep religiosity born of centuries of history involving the Roman Catholic Church in the Americas. The competent observer would have noted that around the necks of both male and female Hispanics there is a Cross. Nearly every Hispanic wears this symbol. So why, Volkeswagen and CreativeOndemanD would you advertise to Hispanics in such a way as to implicate them with gutter speak and publicly embarrass them?
Another clue that Volkswagen's agencies are rampant with immaturity can be found in the television ad for the GT1 2006 featuring the Fast thing: 'Make friends with your fast'. 'Fast' looks like Darth Vader had fallen into a group of indigenous head shrinkers. The entire thrust of the ad is to promote illegal speed. This piece of genius came from the Crispin Porter & Bogusky Agency. It also promotes boorish manners and a lack of consideration the male driver has towards his female passenger. Only idiots would come up with advertisements like 'Turbo-Cojones' and 'Fast'. Some of the 'idiots' are to be found within the two ad agencies, but not all of them. The ultimate responsibility for the dismal campaigns rests squarely with the misguided ad direction from the not-so-smart suits inside Volkswagen.
— Don McKay
