I recently came across this remarkable long-form commercial for the Pontiac Parisienne. It has all the substance of a daytime soap opera on mute, and the star of the show is basically a rebadged Caprice. Pontiac discovered plastic in the 70s (GTO nose) and pioneered it in the 80s with things like the Formula’s body kit (and this Parisienne’s wheel well flares and rear reflector panel fills,) before going a little bit too far with the Bonneville SSE body kit in the 90s and ultimately “officially” too far with the Aztek’s cladding the following decade. Throughout these decades, plastic is observed to be more gradually and humanely introduced on Chevy, Cadillac and Buick products.
This film was distributed to dealers on Laserdisc. This style of video distribution is interesting to me because the product absolutely reeks of being designed by committee: It’s a document of corporate culture, unlike anything made for the general public – unintentionally funny and even arcane (See Wendy’s Hot Drinks and Old Country Buffet Slicing Station for more examples.) Employees at Pontiac dealerships were meant to watch these videos and learn the product features they could then parrot to sell more product (the senior sales guys did not watch a single minute of these movies.) I frankly can’t imagine myself as a sales employee sitting in the bullpen watching this video against my will. I would read the back of the tape sleeve and wonder aloud: “A full minute in, and we still haven’t seen the car? What is this?”
The shot @ 2:53 is great because it shows how these full-sized boats can take expansion joints and potholes at highway speeds and dampen them in a way FWD cars could never. After 3 or 4 controlled bobs, the pothole is fully absorbed. In a thoroughly okay moment of marketing, the car is described as providing an “…unmistakably elegant ride.”
In my opinion, manufacturers missed a great opportunity during the late days of UHF and early days of cable TV, when instead of showing late night sleazy “1-900” ads or boring niche programs (or being off the air, for that matter) stations could have aired works like these as short-form infomercials and increased sales.
One detail that is surprisingly chilling is this shot @ 4:52. Kubrick used this same technique in The Shining to great effect (more on this here.) In the environment of a Pontiac Parisienne dealer promo, it is as silly to see as it is profoundly frightening. (FYI, the book is a lot scarier than the movie.)
Overall this car is forgettable – as previously mentioned it didn’t differentiate enough from the Chevrolet Caprice, but it was far from being the final nail in Pontiac’s coffin. These were well-made vehicles that responded to good maintenance schedules, and I still see one on the road every now and then, but they aren’t quite collector car status yet. If anything, the two-door configuration is going to be the most valuable, and unfortunately the Parisienne was not available as a two door. Another glaring omission is the lack of spoked or mag wheels as an option.
I would like to see more recent examples of these product marketing videos from any industry, but I fear the end result would be affected by too much self-consciousness – they are probably now keen to avoid being called “cringey” by their own sales staff.
These promotional videos represent a very interesting unexamined facet of media; yet, to paraphrase Socrates: “The unexamined video is not worth watching.”
Leon Ferri 