Selling America America: An Advertiser's Journey
Appreciating almost 50 years of Ford F-150 commercials. Because how something is sold can tell us a lot about who is buying.
Hi Folks!
I just finished an interview this afternoon with the lovely Hazel Jane Plante, where I spoke about my work, and how important it is to convey love.
However, love can take many forms. In many cases, it is generous and wholesome. But in others?
I have a confession to make. I have a love for writing’s dark side.
No, not long poetry.
Advertising.
I love writing novels and poetry and plays and short stories. But I cannot deny the rush that comes with writing an ad. Ad writing is free from lofty ideas—it’s selling computers and banks and pizzas and tacos. It’s ghostwriting reassuring letters from politicians and college presidents, while hitting the art director’s word count right on the button.
I was an ad writer and copywriter. For a time was my agency’s copy master.
During that time, we knew we were practicing the dark arts. Not because of what our clients were trying to sell (which were neither better nor worse than their competitors), but because the job of an ad writer is to make the customer feel inadequate.
There is a reason why grocery store music always seems slow and melancholy:
Nobody who is happy and content has ever bought anything.
If great poetry ultimately affirms one’s soul, great ad writing ultimately destabilizes it. An ad’s goal is not to show how great the product is. After all, no matter how good the chocolate cake is; if you’re not hungry, you’re not buying.
So, an ad works to trigger your hungers, doubts, insecurities, fears. Yes, of course an ad sells a product and a brand, but not through selling a product or brand. Ads work by reminding you that you need something.
Every time The Most Interesting Man in the World did something Interesting, it reminded potential customers of how insignificant and banal their lives were by comparison. BUT they could raise a Dos Equis and say, “Stay Thirsty My Friends.”
Genius.
Predicting need, anticipating hunger, making the customer want…ad writing can be intoxicating. Thinking “I can sell anything to anyone” is a sure sign of an ad writer going completely to the dark side.
✨🛻✨
I left ad writing years ago (wanting to save what was left of my soul). However, I retain a fascination with well-crafted ads, which causes my friends to question my morality. Fair enough.
But I use still use ads in my literary theory courses. My favorite ads are those that advertise the same basic product over a decades and generations. Studying ads can tell you a lot about how the wants, needs, and fears of a community can shift over time.
Take for example, the Ford F-150 Pickup Truck. It was introduced in 1975 and has been the best-selling truck in the US for over 40 years. However, at the time, the F-150 was seen as a compromise truck, as it was created to meet EPA emission guidelines.
Here’s an ad from 1978. Right away, we witness heritage, legacy, longevity—and most importantly, the approval of one generation for the next. There is no announcer; the owners speak for themselves. The Vietnam War had only recently ended, with no clear victory for the US, and this is the perfect ad for a time when the new generation of Ford buyers might worry that they did not live up to their fathers and grandfathers before them. Wonderful stuff.
By the 80s, worry seemed to have grown more urgent, with more personal fear. Why?
Notice how often this upbeat, gruff 1987 ad mentions America. Instead of a quiet nod from grandpa—one must trust the song saying that this IS America’s truck. This sort of ad often works when customers are feeling weak, unsure, worried, and without answers.
Looking at this, one recalls that in the 80s, economic power was shifting (Japan was booming). Although there are calls to patriotism, there aren’t many explosions or pyrotechnics (those would come after 9/11).
Ad writers also played upon worries of losing one’s personal potency is also clear. Note how the ad is full of big, tough, strong men. Ford had preached how tough its trucks were—but this ad became less about how tough the truck was—and more about how tough the driver was.
The ad also appeals to women, showing virile men doing virile things—literally packing wood—again, to remind men to that they might not be Ford tough.
What gets me about the 1987 ad is how bald-faced direct it is. This is a risky move—because ads like this can be parodied and laughed at.
And that can wreck a campaign like this.
However, 10 years later, Ford shows an ad that does poke fun at all the preceding stereotypes.
Some of my favorite ads come from late 90’s. In this F-150 ad from 1997, we see something missing from all previous Ford F-150 ads: humor.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, the Cold War had passed, and humanity had not exterminated itself. We still led the world in technology, and Japan’s economy had collapsed.
One can almost sense the country’s need to laugh a little. And so, we have Jack Palance—a tough actor, but an actor nonetheless—both playing up and poking fun at American machismo. As he talks to his younger co-star, there is a feeling of one generation teaching the other, as well.
For me, this is such a bittersweet ad, because in it, I see ad writers betting for once on optimism, that rather fearing loss, customers might be ready to grow (the kids will love that third door).
However, those times came to an end with 9/11. And by 2002, we had this.
After 9/11, our country was shaken to its core. Here, we have someone with a boat, fleeing an almost Biblical storm.
The driver, in contrast with the drivers of previous ads does not seem overly powerful or virile. He is worried, wind-blown, searching. But his truck has not failed him, has not broken—indeed, as the Announcer with the Very Deep Voice declares it “hungers for power.” When lighting hits the truck and it roars to life, it might as well have shouted “Shazam!”
Or even “Shazam, Amen!” because for an instant, the boat the truck is towing is illuminated like a cross (and yes, since this is CGI, this would be intentional).
After 9/11 people were in shock. Many Americans were asking “why do they hate us?” Asking, asking the heavens, questioning their souls. And ad writers were happy to assert that the Ford F-150 held part of the answer.
Ten years later, we were smack dab in the middle of the Obama presidency. 9/11 had not faded into memory, but Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden were dead. Not justice, but perhaps some closure.
Instead of the Announcer with the Very Deep Voice it’s the Announcer Who Sounds Like Your Brother-in-Law Talking discussing a Business Opportunity.
The writers of this ad might be betting that things are relatively peaceful, and people are less worried virility or competition or an impending flood than they are about economy.
However, any ad that stresses saving money reveals a worry that any good times might not be lasting, and that harder times might be just ahead.
And here we are in 2021. We have a guy with a dog alone in the woods making…something. What is striking is the lack of blaring music, explosions, or graphics. Just the sounds of truck, tools, dog, weather, woods, water.
This is for a world full of COVID, Guns, Global Warming, Social Upheaval, War—and all media surrounding each. This is for an audience who hungers to get away from it all, who yearns for some quiet.
The Announcer with the Very Deep Voice is back. But this time, even he is leaving the guy alone, saying “whatever you want to do out there.”
Ad writers present a solitary man, with his dog, with the skills to both use technology and to make something strong and purposeful like a cabin, a house.
In this most isolated and self-sufficient of ads, we may imagine a customer unable to disentangle from networks and noise, doubting his own skills, perhaps feeling left behind by technology.
It is a very personal, almost intimate, ad, and a bold move by the writers to have customers so directly confront their inner selves. Wonderful.
✨🛻✨
Now, mind you, Ford puts out many, many truck ads, and the flavor of each can be very different, even in the same year. I wasn’t cherry picking—I just let myself scroll through YouTube—but I am sure one can find other ads that tell quite different stories from the ones I presented.
However, looking at how something is being sold can tell us a lot about who is buying—what changes and what remains the same, what we cherish, and what we fear.
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Next Week--Vieille Chanson: A Story about Katrina and her Violin, before the Story of Katrina and her Violin
Cover Image: Tim Graham / Collection:Getty Images /Getty Images