t stands to reason when we plunk down thousands of dollars for a car, our choice says something about the kind of person we are, think we are, or do not realize we are.

Some pretty good research has been done over the years to group people into several distinctive "psychographic" categories.

For example, folks in the "belonger" category would be more likely to buy commonplace, no threat cars like a Taurus, Cavalier or Camry. The new Volkswagen is bought by "socially conscious" types. Lincoln Navigators, for example, are bought by assholes (aka "achievers'). You get the idea.

So if cars do take on an identity -- a brand, as it were -- then advertising should be able to help shape and craft that identity, shouldn't it?

You'd think so, wouldn't you?

Consider Oldsmobile.

Its decades-long brand identity was: "The Gallant Men of Olds." Aside from the fact that this had absolutely nothing to do with the car -- do we really have any emotion save suspicion toward car salesmen and mechanics? -- a bigger problem emerged when times changed and this firmly implanted motto became a herald for typical corporate sexist behavior.

Ooops.

This years-long campaign was replaced by "The Power of Intelligent Engineering" except that Oldsmobile really didn't have any.

They also tried "This is not your father's Oldsmobile" when, in fact, it was.

Now, it's something else. Despite hundreds of millions of dollars invested in brand-building advertising -- and despite the fact that the "Gallant Men" started to go sour more than thirty years ago -- Oldsmobile's market is still old folks. The "Gallant Men" is an albatross about its neck. (The Oldsmobile 'Achieva' and "Intrigue'. Oh, those'll fix things up....)

And now... poof! GM pulls the plug on the entire Oldsmobile division.

This is not comparable to shutting down a specific model, as GM will do in 2002 with its Camaros and Firebirds (an American tragedy, IOHO), or as Ford did with its Thunderbird. In those cases the manufacturers believed they'd saturated the market and overbuilt the cars. Camaros and Firebirds will be back; the new T-bird looks fantastic; and let's remember that Ford killed, retooled, and relaunched its Mustang, too, with fabulous results.

Oldsmobile, on the other hand, is dead and buried.

What killed Oldsmobile?
Oldsmobile was killed by its own reflection. Image killed it. Branding killed it.

WhizzO's general rule about expensive products is that they do not benefit from mass media brand advertising. Less is more.

Indeed, when BMW and Porsche undertook expensive, mass media ad campaigns, their market shares actually declined.

Persons willing to spend that kind of scratch on a car weren't too keen to see their status symbols marketed to the masses during Seinfeld commercial breaks. A few years after the campaigns ended, sales went back up.

It's not just snobs turning their noses up at brand advertising. There's a not so fine line between embedding an idea in the mind of a target audience, and pounding us over the head with a bullshit slogan using heavy mallets and pointed sticks. People get sick and tired of it. Advertising, and especially long-term brand advertising -- ultimately backfires.

This diatribe isn't to imply that all advertising sucks, or even that brand-building advertising dittos. We're just saying that agencies almost never do it right!

Maybe that's why the fashion industry -- with its in-house advertising -- seem to get it.