Ridiculousness in Advertising

Advertisers like sponsors, especially famous sponsors.  It save a lot of time and energy.  You don’t have to be creative.  Simply put a famous person with your product or service and people pay attention.  Easy money.

But it does get silly on occasion.

The Avengers have an official car.  The commercial airs in front of the movie and is quite amusing (possibly because I haven’t had to see it twenty or thirty times), featuring a voice GPS unit giving instructions like “Turn right at explosion”, “Swerve left at falling car” and my personal favourite: “U-Turn, U-Turn, U-Turn” as the giant flying space worm comes down the street.

Then comes the product identification and the bombastic announcement that this is the official car of the Avengers.  And if fictional comic book characters endorse it, we know it must be good.

Except … even on a fictional level, it doesn’t make any sense.

None of the characters drive cars.  Not one of them.  The closest we see is when Bruce Banner shows up on a dinky motorbike.  They drive futuristic jets and fly under their own power.  The flying invisible aircraft carrier is quite cool, but that’s not what this company is selling.

The only thing we see the Avengers do with cars is fling them at bad guys.  Is that why they’re endorsing this car?  Is it easy to fling?  Aerodynamic when thrown?  Sufficient weight to actually smush the enemy?

The ability to be thrown one handed by a superhero is not exactly top of my list when it comes to features I’m looking for in my next automobile.

Most commercials don’t make any sense.  The goal is to get people to recognize the name and associate it with a positive emotion (a test I fail since I almost never remember the actual product).  I recognize the goal but a little plausibility should be maintained.

Now if a company wanted to sell me one of those funky jets .... or my own personal Hulk .... then the Avengers would be good sponsors.