Super Bowl ads are known to set trends, and the auto industry will step up the pitch for electric vehicles following, making them the center of attention. Even Tesla, the only company to not ever Super Bowl ad, managed to get the Model Y into a Popeyes commercial as Ram claimed that its latest electric pickup truck’s advanced technology had solved the issue caused by ” premature electrification” that caused consumers to be unhappy.
It was an ad paid for through the Dawn Project, an advocacy group for safety that will result in a series of ads to remind customers they are safe in the coming year. EV technology is secure.
In it, Tesla’s autonomous vehicles slam mannequins that are too small for them. Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk was adamant about the commercial tweeting that even the worst publicity could be used to promote Tesla’s self-driving car.
As a scholar of media fascinated by how different societies manage disruptive technology, I find many similarities between our current concerns regarding electric vehicles and the first days of automobiles.
At the time, the conversation in public included a mixture of optimism and trepidation. Then, automakers began using advertising to calm these concerns.
Signals of sound and safety
In reality, promoting safer technology is similar to the automotive industry.
Because cars can cause harm to the lives of people, Engineers have attempted to address their safety issues. At the beginning of the 20th century, alongside improved brakes, headlights, and steering wheels, the engineers claimed that advancements in the technology of sound signaling which was the car horn could make driving safer by alerting drivers that a car was approaching.
In my new book, “Danger Sound Klaxon! The Horn that changed History,” I tell the tale of the early sound signals. For the first time, engineers moved to adapt tones, bells, and whistles from other transport to cars. Then, they decided to use the squeeze bulb horn, which produced a “honk honk” noise.
The main issue? In noisy streets, they needed to be louder to be heard.
Then in 1909, a brand new horn manufactured by the Lovell-McConnell firm known as the Klaxon solved the issue, giving drivers the ability, at just a touch of an electronic button, to release the metallic “aaOOga” sound so loud that nobody could hear the sound. They quickly convinced people that their patent-pending noise technology was safer to drive with.
The ad campaign of Klaxon employed the new method of ” situational advertising” that placed readers in a scenario in which they were offered an option. The majority of these advertisements, appearing in a variety of the time’s top magazines, prompted readers to think about the best method to safeguard themselves from the negligence of others.
One Klaxon advertisement from the 1909 issue in the Saturday Evening Post portrays a distracted pedestrian stepping into the path of a vehicle within New York’s Herald Square with the tag phrase “You Cannot Change Human Nature.”
“The auto must have a signal that really warns,” is the text. “If all minds were always alert – if children could protect themselves – if the weak were strong, there would be no need of any auto signal.”
So the advertisement says that the most responsible option for car owners is to buy the Klaxon as its distinctive sound screams “AUTO Coming! LOOK OUT! NOW!”
Drivers can rest easy with quieter technology. secure
People were interested in the medium and the message. For the past two decades, Klaxon controlled the world market for car horns and pumped its technological message of safety into the media world.
However, relying on loud signaling technology to protect people turned out to be a risky proposition following the horrors of World War I, when Klaxons were utilized in the trenches to serve as an alarm for gas. After the war, the international battle against noise was waged.
Therefore, all societies looked to various forms of technology, like traffic lights, to address the security issue that car horns could not solve. The Klaxon was reduced in size when engineers concentrated on the issue of quieting car noise by muffling techniques like closed cabins and “silent gearwheels.”
Although their emphasis changed, the message was the same: The new technologies will always be able to solve issues caused by the existing technologies.
Innovative technology promises to reduce the need for thinking.
Fast forward to the present, and you will see how the more things evolve in technology-based advertising and marketing, the more they remain the same.
Look at the recent commercials of the Atlas brand that aired during football games throughout the entire season. It also likes the Klaxon advertisement from 1910.
It is called “Those Guys,” the clever ad features an unplugged zoomer who is captivated by his phone and utterly unaffected by the surrounding world. Strolling through the streets while the song Doris Day’s “It is a Lovely Day Today” plays in the background. As the man from the 1910 Klaxon advertisement, this man walks right up to a moving Atlas. However, with the car’s “Standard Front Assist and Pedestrian Monitoring” technology, the car brakes automatically, and everyone is protected.
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The scenario depicted in the commercial has evolved. Modern, quieter technology ensures that both drivers and pedestrians are safe from injury by detecting the movement of a vehicle and automatically stopping and stopping. Both of them are warned.
However, the underlying message is the same: since humans cannot change and there always will exist “those guys,” rest sure that technologies “built with safety in mind” will protect us.
No matter what product advertisers try to promote, the fundamental technology – a religion of the people that is a part of American popular culture just as influential as football- is something you can be sure of.
It does not matter if loud horns, self-driving automobiles, smart speakers, or cryptocurrency individuals are constantly bombarded by messages that urge them to embrace new technologies without thinking about whether they need the things that companies are selling.
