America, land of the free and the place where advertising can say all the crap it wants about the competition's product, as long as it's true. It can lie as well, but then we get to see the other side of America: the land of lawsuits and trials.
But big companies such as Chevrolet know where to draw the line and protect themselves from that second part while still making sure the audience gets the point they're trying to make about the competition.
The new Chevrolet Volt, GM's second generation extended-range EV, will get a brief outing as a 2016 model before being replaced early next year with the 2017 year model. Deliveries to dealerships in California have already started this week, with the rest of the country set to get the new 2017 Chevrolet Volt directly.
Chevrolet's new ads, which have debuted this fall online and will later show up on tv as well, will carry on in the same vein as those thrashing the aluminum use in the Ford F-150 pickup truck. According to Tim Mahoney, Chevrolet’s global chief marketing officer, those ads have been extremely effective and so the company sees no reason not to extend the tactic over different segments.
Well, here's a reason: while your ads do make a point, constantly focusing on pointing out the flaws in other brand's products can eventually turn you into the bitter old man sitting alone on a bench in the park yelling at people.
So, expect Chevrolet's ads to feature the same focus group scenario using actual customers - and not actors - where they're presented with the cold facts about the chinks in the competitor's products' armor.
And since we've kept talking about "competitors", but never once mentioned a name, here is who Chevrolet will be attacking and how it will be doing it. First up is the Toyota Prius, the Japanese model synonym with the whole hybrid movement, but a car that still uses nickel metal hydride battery technology just like old 90's electronics (the lithium-ion option is an extra). The Volt, on the other hand, has "state of the art lithium-ion batteries" as standard.
The second victim is the Nissan Leaf, the best-selling EV for a few years and a car that pretty much made the idea of owning an electric vehicle bearable. However, it does nothing to deal with the dreaded range anxiety, with the Leaf only good for 84 miles on a complete charge, as opposed to the Volt that goes over 400 miles on a full charge and a full tank of gasoline.
Here's how Chevrolet wants us to ditch the other cars in favor of the 2016 Volt:
"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie) Full profile
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