Confidence walks a fine line. Too much and you’re perceived as cocky. Too little and you’re wimpy and unassertive. Just like any other adjective you want to target, there’s a million different ways to convey your message. Spell it out in a headline. Imply it with imagery. Maybe a little of both:
But one thing remains universally true when using confidence in advertising; it’s all or nothing. You can’t half-ass confidence. Doing so contradicts itself. Even worse, the result of an unsuccessful attempt at adding swagger to your messaging is corny, meaningless shit. See below:
Stereotypical Americana references? Check. Token black guy? Check. Car payment assistance for those with 35k Pontiacs and 50k Cadillacs in front of 300+k homes? Check. And how the hell do you protect a used car’s value at trade-in time? You can’t if it’s American, it has none. So just make the baseless claim in a predictable, boring ad and hope people are too busy thinking how cute rally caps are.
“It’s time to reinvent,” the VO guy tells us. “It’s time to rally. It’s time to come back…” Yes, to good advertising. Need an example? See below:
Everything we do goes into everything we do. Eight words. Lots of confidence. Kudos to Honda for keeping it simple. The comparison above shows us there’s no single recipe for confidence, only a million ways to screw it up.
Makes this GM commercial look kinda lame, doesn’t it?
GM, you’re producing better cars. You’re appearing at the top of quality score lists. You have exciting cars in the Camaro, Corvette and CTS-V. Your product is there, but your branding isn’t even in the same area code. Stop the revolving door of executives and get it together.
America doesn’t want a comeback, it wants its money back.
Don’t even get me started on the latest inexcusable Chevy Volt promotion.
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