Mercedes Benz, Dove and Match.com

So, welcome to the first real post of Advertising Waste: now with 20% More Presence.

Have you ever noticed how luxury car adverts rarely promote the car?




Looking at the recent history of Mercedes Benz adverts, they read a lot like the motivational posters that were popular a while back. Here is one for Attraction:



And the ad currently doing the rounds, on Presence…



Having watched that a couple of times, I can’t tell you a thing about a specific Mercedes Benz car. I can’t tell you how big its engine is. I can’t even tell you how much it is- although I can guarantee it’s expensive.
I can, however, tell you about Josh Brolin’s views on “Presence”, or at least the views he’s been paid to promote. According to Mercedes “[presence is] not about ostentatious adolescent display, it should be effortless”. Because nothing says effortless like buying a £70,000+ luxury brand car.
Whilst I can see the relevance of aspiration and attraction in regards to a Mercedes Benz- who wouldn’t want an attractive car to show that they’ve really made it- to say that owning one is not ostentatious is daft; if you don’t want to show off about the fact that you’ve got money, buy a second hand Vectra.

Promoting skincare products for men has never seemed to be particularly easy, a lot of the adverts seem a little confused, apparently attempting to appeal as much to girlfriends and wives as much as the men who need moisturiser. Dove, however, has stepped away from the traditional man-in-front-of-a-mirror advert to give us this:



Starting off right at the beginning, with the very moment of conception, it goes on to show the growth and fulfilling of aspirations throughout a man’s life, to the William Tell Overture. It has some moments some caused me to laugh (mostly at the ‘kid’ on the right 15 seconds in- also visible on the preview). It then shows him lying on the grass, relaxed and at ease, just as the voiceover says “You’re a man”. And I can practically hear an entire gender answering “…who won’t moisturise”.
Still, it’s nice to see a bit of humour being applied to marketing men’s grooming products, for a few years men who use them (and I count myself in this number) have almost exclusively been portrayed as narcissistic preening gits (I don’t count myself in this number) in front of the mirror- the only exception being Lynx and their feminist-baiting advertising.

Finally this week, match.com, with their “Duet” Ad:



Much like the Dove and Mercedes Benz adverts, this doesn’t really promote the site, so much as an abstract concept. However, instead of selling the idea of being a man (who is comfortable enough in your own skin to cover it in moisturising shower gel), or the idea that a new Mercedes Benz isn’t an ostentatious show of wealth but really more like a quiet poker player, sitting on a great hand. Match.com are selling the abstract concept of love.
The advert features an impromptu duet between a man and a woman in a music shop, singing about stuff they like. It is a genuinely lovely advert and having seen it a number of times, I can safely say that I would very much like to meet a woman in this way. It’s definitely preferable to idly searching a group of pictures online to pick out a girl from her face, because you're incapable of striking up a conversation with a girl in public, let alone strike up a song.
I can also say that having spent a lot of time in music shops, they seldom contain women, and even if they did, it is rare to be able to hear the quiet strum of an acoustic guitar and gently uttered vocals over a 14-year-old playing Smells Like Teen Spirit with enough distortion to make Kurt Cobain cover his ears. Despite the notable hindrance of being dead.
It may be advertising a love story lifted straight out of the film “Once”, and it may not manage to actually make me want to go online to find a spouse. But at least it beats match.com bleating that they’ve run out of men/women.