Back in my teaching days, I would always look forward to teaching one particular lesson about connotative and denotative meanings of words. While the subject itself is rather dull, I taught the concept through the topic of car design. Why did Ford decide to use the name Fusion? Why does a Chevy Malibu sound like fun to drive? Why does a Dodge Hellcat appeal to a select group of people? Even more fascinating is the psychology behind crafting the car ad. I always had a selection of ads to show my students and we would discuss what the target audience was for the ad, along with the connotative meaning behind the name.
In 1955, Ford employed poet Marianne Moore to help them come up with a name for their hot new product, which ended up being the notoriously unsuccessful Edsel. However, Marianne had submitted several suggestions, with some of them being just completely ridiculous. Here are some of her suggestions:
Hurricane Accipter (hawk)
The Impeccable
Symmechromatic
Thunderblender
The Resilient Bullet
Intelligent Bullet
Bullet Cloisoné
Bullet Lavolta
The Intelligent Whale
The Ford Fabergé (That there is also a perfume Fabergé seems to me to do no harm, for here allusion is to the original silversmith)
The Arc-en-Ciel (the rainbow)
Arcenciel
Mongoose Civique
Anticipator
Regna Racer (couronne a couronne) sovereign to sovereign
Aeroterre
Fée Rapide (Aerofee, Aero Faire, Fee Aiglette, Magi-faire) Comme Il Faire
After looking at her list of names, you might feel the way Ford Motor Co. felt when they kept getting these rather strange suggestions thrown their way. In the end, Ford ended up using the Edsel name, and the rest is history.
This story is often used to show how some executives can be completely tone-deaf when it comes to marketing and understanding what people want in a product. However, reading these letters and that story in general is how I became rather fascinated by the psychology behind marketing.
By the way, you can purchase the book that Marianne Moore ended up putting together of her letters between her and Ford Motor Co. It is called Letters from and to the Ford Motor Company.
I once was part of a focus group when I was just out of college. I had a friend who took part in focus groups often as a way to make money, and she convinced me it was very little work for decent pay, so I signed up for one. We were tasked with discussing the renaming of a local hospital, and the whole process took about four hours. We had to listen to their vision for the rebranding, we had very lengthy discussions about different names. I don’t remember all of them, but I remember one of them being Heartland and another being Crossroads as alternatives to the name they did go with, which was Avera. Ironically, that was the name I liked least of the four they presented us because I thought the name sounded like aloe vera, which I guess was probably part of the point. Healing vibes, right?
And now when new car models come out, I think about all the thought and energy that went into that name. It’s got to be getting tougher to name cars these days because – let’s face it – all the good ones have already been taken. Thunderbird . . . Rocket . . . Mustang . . . Falcon . . . Puma . . . names that evoke speed and power were some of the first ones to be used. And we have a Montana, a Colorado, a Santa Fe, a Durango, a Tucson, a New Yorker, a Dakota, and several other place names that are already taken, so obviously car companies are going to have to get more and more creative as time goes on.
My favorite part of the car lesson was the end, where students would be turned loose to design an ad around a fictional car, the name carefully chosen for its connotative meaning. I love seeing the creative names they’d come up with; however, every year there was always a jokester or two that tried to slip something rather inappropriate by me and I always had to give a stern lecture at the start of the project: be appropriate or you’ll be doing it over. I remember getting a car design that was entitled “The Milf.” One was called the “Shaggin’ Wagon.” Many teenage boys tried to work the number 420 or 69 into their model name. But overall, the majority of the names were fun and they made me laugh.
That’s not to say that the real car companies didn’t try to inject a little sexual connotation into their advertising. Behold, the series of 1968 Dodge Toronado ads that liked to recycle the phrase “bold, brawny, and massively male” throughout the texts of the ad series.
I mean, they weren’t even TRYING to market this car to women.
Some other gems:
So not only are they pretty much claiming that their car is as fast as a plane, but they are also claiming it is aerodynamic. Uh . . . I beg to differ. Look at what the inset picture is bragging about: push-button driving! The fifties were so fantastic for this reason.
I always loved this ad because of the incongruity of the picture. The kids are already playing in the water, dad is getting the floaties out of the trunk, but mom just sits there, so in love with her new red Chevy that she doesn’t even want to get out of the car. This was great marketing to women – the color, the perfect family image (always one boy and one girl), and a mom who has been entrusted to drive the car. Bravo, Chevy!
This ad has A LOT going on, and it’s an older ad from 1937, hence all the text. Ads now have little to no text because they know that we’re too busy to read anything. This one’s like a novella. First, the picture. What . . . is . . . happening? Woman driving, which I think is interesting for the year. She is obviously living out some cowboy fantasy here as her car flies over the hills on a ranch somewhere. The best part is the panel of “experts” that Chrysler has picked to offer choice words about their product. We have Lady Mendl, a designer and stylist; Tony Sarg, an illustrator and author; Irene Hayes, a florist; and Isabella Taves Miller, a fashion promotion editor. Why wouldn’t you trust the opinions of such high society?
It’s easy to get lost in some of these old ads, but if you have some hours to kill, check out this site, which has TONS of old ads scanned in that you can search by make, model, and year.
Even after teaching this lesson for 20+ years, I still could not figure out the justification for calling a car a Gremlin. Small and fast, I get it, but do you really want to market yourself as a small, quick, and UGLY product?
Discuss. 🙂
