Tag Archives: marketing

A Grace Space

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This Volvo “is aimed at the most demanding of customers: the independent woman in the premium segment.” So states the narrator for “YCC: Your Concept Car”, a look at creating an automobile specifically for women. Not to be confused with Rush “YYZ”, or F.U.B.U. “For Us By Us”, the YCC has such innovations as paint that is “just like a non-stick frying pan” and no easy access to the engine compartment. I assume this means that an independent woman in the “premium segment” couldn’t be bothered to know what’s going on with the car.

Over the soothing tones of new-age electronic jazz we learn it’s a “tough car” but not “brutal”. According to one of the women on the design team:

“You’re not buying a technical product; you’re buying by emotions.”

At :53 is my favorite part. A zoned out woman with a sweater casually draped around her shoulders wakes to tell us what our first impression of the car will be: “A feeling of, uh, grace… and, uh, space.” But she’s totally grace-less, speaking slowly and staring bug-eyed into the void.

VIA Sociological Images

BONUS: Trip out to the ambient music on this YCC promo video. Turn up the speakers for 9 minutes of hot buzz.

Volvo vinner i Längden!

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volvo140_slacks

The strapping young lad above is Sune Larsson from Stockholm, Sweden. According to the 1979 issue of Din Volvobutik:

Sune äger en Volvo 144 av – 72 Ã¥rs modell. Den har gÃ¥tt over 74.000 mil och har gjort Sune till vinnare i vÃ¥r tävling om vilken Volvo 140 som rullat längst.

Anyone care to translate? I assume he drove over 74,000 miles in 7 years? Was that a feat of derring-do in the late 70s? Ten thousand miles a year is an average commute these days. Regardless, that’s one proud Swede.

About: I found a trove of scanned Volvo brochures and miscellany on a server from Sweden a while back and will be trickling the best images out over time. They’re collected under the category “Marketing a Tank“.

Sexist Volvo Ad?

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thm_ad_sexist.jpgFeministing posted a vintage Volvo ad from the 60’s that would never fly today. First, because it treats the woman in the ad as an inept, incompetent shrew. Second, because plenty of women buy cars themselves and the ad’s target audience seems to be guys who need help in convincing their non-driving wives of the wisdom of their decisions. The narrator says:

If your wife won’t let you buy a Volvo (what, is she your mother?), let her drive one. That’ll really do the job. Once she gets the feel of it, she might like knowing you’re getting a car that, in most cases, lasts long enough to get people out of car payments, and into new furniture payments, or swimming pool payments, or fur coat payments.

All the while this dude’s wife is bumping and jostling down the road, trying to drive a manual, or riding in reverse in the automatic. Get it? Women can’t drive! Ha!I

Is it just me or does that dude look old enough to be her dad?

thm_ad_target.jpgSarah Haskins on Current TV shows that things aren’t that much better now when she deconstructs the loving carress of a Volvo S80.