Have you seen the television advertisement for the Subaru Impreza that asks the rhetorical marketing question, “What makes a Subaru a Subaru?”
The answer, oddly enough, is not “An Obama ‘08 bumper sticker.”
No, the answer to “What makes a Subaru a Subaru?” is “love.”
In fact, the automaker now has an entire campaign devoted to the theme of “love” as the prevailing emotion evoked by its products. There’s even an ad on Youtube called “Love Letters” in which real Subaru owners read personal letters about their attachments to their cars.
The Subaru slogan struck a nerve with me from the moment I first heard it, and not because I drive a Honda. Rather, what bugs me is our cultural fixation on feelings as the basis for every sort of decision, from which car we park in our garages to which candidate we elect to public office.
As a society, we’re much less interested in what something does than in how it makes us feel. This is why a Subaru is all about “love” while a campaign for the Cadillac CTS featured a sexily clad Kate Walsh pondering the question, “When you turn your car on, does it return the favor?” Um…yuck.
If Thomas Paine made the 18th century famous as the “Age of Reason,” American marketers and media must certainly be responsible for our current “Age of Emotion.”
But what’s so bad about a culture that considers emotions first? Well, for starters, it generates questions at presidential press conferences such as New York Times reporter Jeff Zeleny’s now-famous inquiry of Pres. Obama, “What has enchanted you?” about the presidency.
Borrowing on that touchy-feely theme, this past weekend in a piece on Father’s Day, CBS’ Harry Smith asked the leader of the free world, regarding his childhood, “In this fatherless world, where did you learn to love?”
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