If you write advertising, it’s good to have some things you can ridicule. When you want to show the less-than-desirable option of not using the advertiser’s
product and the loser is driving a car, you can’t insult just any car. It
shouldn’t be any recognizable current brand. Not only would you be ticking
off someone else’s advertiser, the car maker might sue you.
So you turn to the perfect answer – the AMC Gremlin. Not only is it a dead brand, the company that made it is out of business.
It was a 1970’s-era hatchback and shaped sort of like a shoe. As
an object of derision, perhaps only the Yugo was the target of more scorn than the Gremlin.
Most of this was unjustified. To
appreciate a Gremlin you had to own one, which I did. I drove it for years and
loved it. It was a tough little car, in many ways a forerunner of the small SUV.
Lower the rear seatback, and it doubled as a small station wagon. It had lots of road clearance on big 15-inch wheels. I never
got stuck in mud or sand with it. So what if it got muddy. It looked as good dirty as it did clean.
This didn’t change the impression that it was a geekmobile. Never once have I heard any guy refer to a Gremlin as a chick magnet.
I can’t recall seeing a Gremlin on the road in the past several years,
but there must be a few around somewhere. They keep showing up being driven by
the “losers” in TV commercials. There’s one in the current
campaign for the Swiffer advanced floor-mopping system. The old sponge mop that’s
trying work its way back into the user’s favor is driving one. You see
just a glimpse of it, but it’s a Gremlin.
It seems a bit sad to see it doomed to perpetual automotive shame.
Commenting on last month’s Roost on the subject of a subscription model
for newspapers’ online sites that would grant access to a list of participating papers, John Dimling, chairman emeritus
of Nielsen Media Research, said it was, “A very
interesting suggestion -- that I've heard nowhere else.”
Thanks,
John, for the comment.
Here’s an interesting
nugget from the recently released Marquest 2009 On Demand Menu Planner Study. Among
households that have advanced services such as a DVR, broadband internet or digital cable TV, 18% say they have the equipment
to route online video to a TV set.
