OT: "Imported From Detroit" Commercials

"We can DO it" and last year's was "We ARE doing it".

Exactly.  This year's was a little too wordy to me.  It's as if the commercial was building up to something, but I felt like in the end, we were left with commercial blue balls.

there isn't a single Big Three car to appeal to a potential BMW/Lexus/Audi buyer.

See, this attitude is why these commercials exist. Because anyone who thinks that the Big 3 don't make cars that can compete with Audi and Lexus hasn't been paying attention lately. And people don't know you sell good cars if they don't look at your cars. Detroit can make the best car the world has ever seen and if people think like you, they'll never know it and never buy it. Hence the need for a commercial like that one that is a lot more powerful than your average car ad.

products. What a tired and uninformed opinion.
By your hypothesis shouldnt all Japanese vehicles be flaming death traps because of the Toyota incidents a few years back?
IMO, "rust buckets" > being burned to death

Ipad not as user friendly from safari as it is with the app.

They are doing some great work

Well, you are trying to compare luxury brands to mass-consumer vehicles, which doesn't make much sense.  Toyota and Honda don't appeal to those owners either.  And yes, I know Toyota owns Lexus.  

Making an argument that a $18k car doesn't appeal to people looking to spend around $35k for an up-market vehicle is patently true, but also pretty irrelevant.  They are different vechicles and different markets - Audi's sales are dwarfed by the Big 3, as are BMW's at least domestically.

With Chrysler, a fully decked-out 300 appeals to a certain type of individual who might have considered a moderately-priced Lexus.  Same with a Cadillac, which is just as sporty and powerful as the makers you listed above, and based on sales seem to appeal to those buyers.  

"uninformed" wasn't an option so I wasn't sure what to go with.

Not true at all. Cadillac makes some great cars that compete very well with bmw/lexus/audi.

I work at the LDT plant in Lansing wich produces the luxury crossover vehicles Buick Enclave, and Acadia Denali. The primary reason why we worked 6 day weeks last year was because those vehicles are strong sellers. Plus LDT's cross town sister plant produces the Cadillac CTS, ATS, and STS. Don't know about your kneck of the woods, but I see lots of these vehilcles on the road, and it gives me a great sense of pride knowing that somebody is driving something that I literally work my fingers to the bone to help produce.

Now let's be fair. BMW used to make attractive cars, and then they hired Chris Bangle.

More to the point, for the most part the Big Three aren't competing with those brands. They are competing with Honda, Toyota, the Koreans and, to a lesser extent, Volkswagon. There's no real difference in quality any more. The Japanese aren't making anything attractive or particularly engaging to drive. In fact, for the person who actually wants a driving car at a reasonable price rather than a rolling living room, the Focus is a far better car than the Corolla.

Full disclosure: Proud, native Detroiter who drives an '87 Toyota Pickup and will be purchasing a similar vintage BMW 3-series in the next month or two.

He might not be from Detroit, but he played somebody in a movie who was!

I mean I know Clint is a man's man American Badass and all that, but it felt weird to have him talking for Detroit, I mean he's been in California his entire life

Exactly what I was thinking

Here's the thing: How many people around the country tie the city's image to the image of the cars it produces?  Probably quite a few.  Lots of people in snobby towns like Boston and NYC and LA, or southern boomtowns like Atlanta or Dallas, think the Midwest is a rusted-out hulk, a place you fly over to get to places you want to go, and of course, Detroit is the rotten core from which all the decay emanates.  So the thinking goes - why buy something built in that shithole?

That's why the Eminem ad was so brillliant.  You show them that rusty industry they expect, show them Detroit freeway signs in case they didn't get the picture, and then hit them with beautiful pictures of downtown, a well-dressed guy who just happens to be Barry Sanders, a figure skater on the downtown rink, and culminate it with the Fox Theatre and uplifting, Detroit-style music - and it's a very powerful, image-changing message.  Change people's image of the city and you change their image of the city's products.

When Daimler took over Chrysler, they actually took a hit in the muscle car and truck markets because the company stopped being "American" (those two markets are fairly nationalistic).  Also they ran those "Dr. Z" commercials which reminded people the Germans were running the show.

These "made in Detroit" ads are just Fiat's way of avoiding any similiar hit.  They're just working to keep the brand America and avoid losing more marketshare for the Dodge Ram, etc.

I agree the product is key, but you also have to keep Ford and GM from being able to attack the fact you are now an Italian owned company.  So effort is made to appear American.  

Thats very true. I kind of wish Ford or GM had these commercials becuase of that very reason.

Nothing about about the ad was "America #$%& YEAH." In fact, the entire ad was written and deleivered from the point of view of an underdog, albeit an underdog with a proud history.

I think the Detroit, Detroit, Detroit message has an important place, but doesn't need to be the main message in every one of their commercials. I think the "vaguely anywhere" and national perspective was precisely what the people writing it were going for. It was perhaps a bit too sentimental and dreary, but I think highlighting their entire line of products along with addressing the country as a whole is not a bad strategy.