In my last post, I asked what, if anything we care about a week after the Super Bowl ads and discussed the first of two remarkable ads (VW’s Mini-Darth). The second, Chrysler’s Imported from Detroit, is one of the most powerful and compelling ads I have seen in decades. While it may work better at rebranding Detroit and the US auto industry than Chrysler per se, it is an extraordinary achievement on many levels. Here’s why:
Chrysler ad: Mature brilliance
Transcending duality: Grit and Grace
Central to the artistic, emotional, and symbolic success of the Chrysler ad is the skillful use of opposites: white and black, factory and theater, rap and gospel, ugliness and beauty, new and old. Eminem, too, embodies opposites wrapped in a single package: the white star in a black genre, the tough guy with a core of deep affection and tenderness.
The ingenious tagline “Imported from Detroit” also contains a duality, first by acknowledging the ubiquity and prestige of imports and facing it head-on. On a deeper level, it unflinchingly addresses the idea that many see Detroit as a foreign country, even a third world country. But Detroit knows better.
This is an extraordinarily mature vision, especially when expressed through the skillful use of archetype.
The Orphan’s Heroic Journey
Imported from Detroit brilliantly illuminates the archetypal story of the Orphan. Archetypes, symbolic figures/ideas encompassing stories we instantly know and recognize, have been used to extraordinary effect with brands: Harley-Davidson as the Rebel, for example.
But the Orphan archetype is a tricky one, and not instantly attractive. In full form it is about falling from innocence, grace and/or comfort into pain and suffering. This experience triggers a journey that ultimately results in greater strength and resilience, and a sense of solidarity with others.
Too often, the Orphan story stops short: the suffering is never overcome, and the narrative is a Done Us Wrong tale of victimhood and grievance, resulting at best in an us-against-them pride and toughness. We all know people (and groups and perhaps entire cultures) who live this stunted story. Their own responsibility is never examined, their weaknesses never transformed into strengths because they hide behind their badge of woundedness and blame.
Here, importantly, the backstory to the Chrysler ad is left silent. The real history of loud, stuck victimhood by all parties in the US auto industry is absent here. In Imported from Detroit, the “town that’s been to hell and back” points no fingers. Instead, it spotlights the gifts of acceptance and maturity: the steel hardened by the hottest fires, and the force uniting people who’ve been through it all together.
The subtle nod of the uniformed doorman is the salute of one soldier to another, the brotherhood of survivors.
Anthem of identity
The Chrysler ad reaches beautifully into the past to tap the values (hardwork and conviction) and skills (“the knowhow that runs generations deep in every last one of us”) that will enable Detroit to create a brighter future. There is a solid sense of identity without apology or explanation:
“That’s who we are, that’s our story”
“We’re from America, but we’re not from New York City (or the Windy City…)”
“This is the Motor City, and this is what we do.”
A New Patriotism:
A few Boomers and others may recall these lines from poetry learned in grade school:
Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
(from Sir Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel)
In Imported from Detroit, Wieden & Kennedy and Chrysler give us a new model for patriotism: a grown-up alternative to simplistic chest-thumping boosterism. We should be grateful to them for such a sophisticated and compelling addition to our cultural repertoire alone.
Will Chrysler succeed? Advertising is only part of the story. The cars must deliver. But if they do, if Detroit, if the American auto industry rises from embers, America succeeds. Is this an ad for Chrysler? Only in part. But by conveying such a large, deep, layered and redemptive vision, Chrysler is exhibiting the courage and generosity of a true leader.
