Car makers have long used sex to sell their
products. Recently, however, both BMW and Renault have based their latest
European marketing campaigns around the icon of modern biology.
BMW’s campaign, which launches its new 3-series sports saloon in Britain and
Ireland, shows the new creation and four of its earlier versions zigzagging
around a landscape made up of giant DNA sequences, with a brief explanation that
DNA is the molecule responsible for the inheritance of such features as
strength, power and intelligence. The Renault offering, which promotes its
existing Laguna model, employs evolutionary theory even more explicitly. The
company’s television commercials intersperse clips of the car with scenes from a
lecture by Steve Jones, a professor of genetics at University College
London. BMW’s campaign is intended to convey the idea of
development allied to heritage. The latest product, in other words, should be
viewed as the new and improved scion of a long line of good cars. Renault’s
message is more subtle. It is that evolution works by gradual improvements
rather than sudden leaps (in this, Renault is aligning itself with biological
orthodoxy). So, although the new car in the advertisement may look like the old
one, the external form conceals a number of significant changes to the engine.
While these alterations are almost invisible to the average driver, Renault
hopes they will improve the car’s performance, and ultimately its survival in
the marketplace. Whether they actually do so will depend, in
part, on whether marketeers have read the public mood correctly. For, even if
genetics really does offer a useful metaphor for automobiles, employing it in
advertising is not without its dangers. That is because DNA’s public image is
ambiguous. In one context, people may see it as the cornerstone of modern
medical progress. In another, it will bring to mind such controversial issues as
abortion, genetically modified foodstuffs, and the sinister subject of
eugenics. Car makers are probably standing on safer ground than
biologists. But even they can make mistakes. Though it would not be obvious to
the casual observer, some of the DNA which features in BMW’s ads for its nice,
new car once belonged to a woolly mammoth--a beast that has been extinct for 10,
000 years. Not, presumably, quite the message that the marketing department was
trying to convey. The difference between BMW’s campaign and Renault’s campaign is that
A. BMW’s campaign employs the metaphor of DNA while Renault’s doesn’t.
B. BMW’s campaign emphasizes technological revolution while Renault’s
emphasizes technological evolution.
C. BMW’s campaign conveys improvement more explicitly than Renault’s.
D. BMW’s campaign is a lot more expensive than Renault’s.