Chia Obama's hairy question: Is it racist scorn or sincere tribute?
November 10, 2009
The scene: A vast crowd at a political rally raises a tumult of adulation. Triumphal music rises. Graphics of President Obama's image slide across the scene as we hear the now-familiar voice say, "Change has come to America. . . . Our moment is now. . . . Yes we can!" The crowd chants. Slow pullback on the image of the White House. Announcer: "To commemorate the inauguration of our 44th president with a well-known American icon, introducing. . . ." Jingle: Chi-chi-chi Chia! Announcer: "Chia Obama!"
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2010 Cadillac CTS Sport Wagon: It sleekly transports your stuff
November 6, 2009
When Italian car-making giant Fiat announced it would be taking over bankrupted, bailed-out Chrysler, I was skeptical. Indeed, I thought the whole plan had ingested powerful hallucinogens. Yet I continue to hope that somehow, one day, I might be able to go down to my local Fiat/Chrysler dealer and purchase an Alfa Romeo 159 Sportwagon. This is a gorgeous Roman lyre of a car, a sleek transporter that -- when painted gloss black and kitted with 19-inch turbine alloy wheels -- will stop traffic like an overturned big rig.
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Ad guys' new book is self-glorifying and half-baked
November 3, 2009
A new book on advertising reminds me of a joke William Shatner once told on "Saturday Night Live": "Star Trek" is really popular in Japan, where it's known as "Sulu, Master of Navigation."
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Lexus HS250h: Keep the lights off in the garage
October 30, 2009
If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning, I'd hammer in the evening and all over the Lexus HS250h until I beat it into something that vaguely resembled a luxury car.
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Online advertisers are monkeying around less
October 27, 2009
Do you miss the monkey?
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Mazdaspeed3: The fast and the curious
October 9, 2009
Look, the world needs some good news. Wars, the economy, swine flu. My God, Andrew Lloyd Webber is making a sequel to "Phantom of the Opera."
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Will this milk commercial get sales?
October 6, 2009
The San Francisco powerhouse agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners takes as its corporate mantra "art serving capitalism." But I wonder if it shouldn't be the other way around?
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2010 Range Rover: I'm besotted, but how long can the gas guzzler last?
October 2, 2009
Look, I'm not immune to the subtle charms of enormous. Barreling down the road in a Range Rover -- big as a barn and about as aerodynamic -- feels really good.
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A whopper of an illusion is being shattered by Burger King ads
September 29, 2009
For anyone fascinated by advertising as culture, I recommend an afternoon watching a NASCAR Sprint Cup stock car race on TV. I also prescribe an overstuffed chair and a bowlful of M&Ms mixed with No-Doz.
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Mercedes' 2010 E550 Coupe wins the E-class beauty contest
September 25, 2009
Is the 2010 Mercedes E550 Coupe pretty?
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Breast cancer ads use lechery for good
September 22, 2009
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and a new crop of public service announcements leverage male lechery to an astonishing degree. The latest and greatest is a spot called "Save the Boobs," from the Rethink Breast Cancer charity, in which a voluptuous young woman in a white bikini walks into a pool party scene. Strip-club music kicks in and the camera slow-mo's her fleshy assets while the partygoers attempt to pick their jaws up off the ground. No discreet, quick-cut editing here. The camera stares, unblinking, unashamed, at the woman's figure.
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European carmakers rev up the electro-diesel concept
September 18, 2009
If you think all hybrid cars are like the Toyota Prius -- mirthless, ugly hair shirts of green conscience -- BMW would like you to meet its Vision: a stealth submarine of a car, lower than a boxing foul, all folded geometry and LED tracer lights. The signature BMW grille glows blue like a reactor cooling pond. The transparent doors open like dragonfly wings.
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Windows 7 is reduced to rainbows and unicorns
September 15, 2009
It's official. Microsoft has no shame. None. They should just stop paying rent on that storage unit where they keep their shame because they, as I said, have none.
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IKEA's Burbank store and the guerrillas in housewares
September 8, 2009
For reasons known only to the pop-culture gods, IKEA -- the Swedish retailer of cheap, lingonberry-flavored furniture and other shinola -- has suddenly become a ubiquitous presence in the ether. Example: in August, when the 2010 IKEA catalog came out, people went utterly bonkers because the designers had changed the print font from the familiar Futura to Verdana -- an esoteric difference, to be sure. The story rocketed to No. 2 on CNN.com's most-read list, according to Mona Astra Liss, IKEA's director of public relations. But for the passing of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the story might have gone to No. 1.
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Audi, BMW sell the sizzle of diesel, not the soot
September 1, 2009
Imagine trying to market a product that most Americans regard as old and obsolete, that is remembered -- if at all -- as low-class and low-tech, noisy and noisome, and whose most notable advocates are truck drivers with prominent trouser cleavage.
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Porsche wraps a 4-door hulk in racy corset
June 26, 2009
The new Porsche Panamera is the best-handling big sedan in the world, which I grant is a little like being the smartest kid on the Arizona State football team or the most chaste governor of South Carolina. No matter how hard you try -- and Porsche's engineers have busted their adorable lederhosen here -- a 4,344-pound, 16.3-foot four-door cannot beguile physics like a sports car, and it certainly cannot be made to handle anything like a 911.
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Chrysler will feel unfulfilled in its Italian romance
May 1, 2009
After an abusive affair with Germany's Daimler ending in 2007 and a dysfunctional relationship with former owner Cerberus Capital Management that ended with the company in bankruptcy Thursday, can Chrysler learn to love again?
