Music basically launched Cadillac’s Escalade back in 2000 when an Atlanta-based rapper named Ludacris released the single, “Southern Hospitality.” The song dominated radio, nightclubs and frat houses. The first verse begins:
“Cadillac grills, Cadillac mills / Check out the oil my Cadillac spills / Matter of fact candy paint Cadillacs kill / So check out the hos my Cadillac fills.”
The music video opens with the camera slowly panning across a sleek and shiny Cadillac Escalade, the oversized SUV that General Motors introduced in 1999. The wider hip-hop nation eagerly embraced the vehicle. Artists like Tyrese, Brandy and Missy Elliott, as well as a host of professional athletes, drove the initial Escalade craze, creating a kind of “buzz” that “you can’t buy,” as Escalade brand manager Susan Docherty told USA Today in October 2001.
All this transpired just before my friends and I turned 16. Soon, big, black, pimped-out Escalades began to appear in the parking lot of my high school. They were over-the-top and larger-than-life—in a word, American. My suburban, J. Crew–wearing peers all wanted one. What else would they drive from the mall to the country club and back?
Cadillac warily took notice of the Escalade’s accidental “urban” image. They tracked the car’s cameos in rap songs and videos and instructed dealers to inform them when celebrities purchase one. But as Docherty said, “It is OK for rappers and athletes to call us cool, but the moment we start calling us cool, we are done.”
Oh, how the times have changed.
Cadillac Escalade’s 2008 campaign reeks like the cheap cologne of electric. Their TV ad campaign stars Brian Bloom and Sofia Vergara, who seem to bear no relevance to the car or campaign other than providing a seductive voice and demeanor. Maybe I’m missing something.
I normally don’t let oversexed car-campaign clichés bother me. In fact, I feel I’ve become immune to the marketing smut that interrupts and infects my landscape. In this case, however, the more I watch these videos, the more irritated I become because the disconnect between music, brand and commercial. For those of you familiar with French electronica, you’ll recognize the song that breaks in toward the end as “Genesis” by electro-house duo, Justice.
I concede that Justice lays down tracks that are as sexy as they are (what can I say? I have a type). When I see this commercial, I think of their fans: fashionistas, geeks and weirdos. They’re losing their minds in dance clubs and stumbling home when the sun comes up, still strung out on vodka and cigarettes. To me, they represent a nighttime counterculture, screaming cool without saying anything at all. Where is Susan Docherty now? I'd like to quote her here again: "The moment we start calling us cool, we are done."
Check out the spots in question below:
For the other two, click here.