Peter M Howard ::

Chromies

15Apr2004 [myth]

So I went and saw Starsky & Hutch last night, and during the previews there was an RTA ad - targeted (apparently, they kept using words like 'sick' and 'chromies' ??) at young people, discouraging car theft and/or speeding. Oh, and it's animated...

There's these 3 guys standing round and they see a fancy car (fancy because it was red and they point out the 'sick chromies'), decide to steal it, one of the guys is reluctant, but peer pressure etc., cops pull up next to them, the driver freaks and speeds off. The audience was made up completely of the target market - who else would watch Starsky & Hutch at 9.30 on a Wednesday night - at least the marketers got that much right. Up till then we were slightly shocked by the foreign language, but just hanging in there. Then the ad cuts to a shot of one dude's head, bleeding everywhere - and the entire cinema bursts out laughing...

And you can just see the old dudes sitting around planning this thing - while the younger animators have no control over content... So the old dudes are going "kids like cartoons, maybe we could animate it" and "our studies indicate that youth use Americanisms like sick". You just wonder if they test screened this ad, and if the people they showed it to were too intimidated to laugh out loud.

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