As Pontiac prepared for the 1967 model year it struggled with what to do about a problem. Although overall sales were so good that the brand had carved out a solid third place in total sales, in 1966 its full-sized cars were starting to lose altitude to its hot-selling intermediates.
A restyling of the Tempest, LeMans and GTO resulted in output jumping 17 percent to almost 360,000 units in 1966. In contrast, big-car production fell 5 percent to roughly 472,000 units.
Also see ‘1965-71 Pontiac ads tried to dazzle with hip sophistication’
Four-door models weren’t the problem. As a case in point, among hardtops the Catalina was up 9 percent, the Star Chief rose by 15 percent and the Bonneville soared by 55 percent.
Some of the biggest losers were two-door models. Hardtops were down across the board: -14 percent for the Catalina, -33 percent for the Bonneville and -37 percent for the Grand Prix. Convertibles saw similar declines. This hinted at a future of mostly declining sales for the big Pontiac.
Looking back at Jordan ads for inspiration
Bruce Melvis was assigned to come up with a new advertising campaign to help revive big-car sales. His first step was to ask illustrators Art Fitzpatrick and Van Kaufman to make the most sensuous image they could for a convertible.
Then, for inspiration, he decided to track down some old Jordan ads. He had heard that they were legendary because they had a lyrical quality that appealed to people’s emotions. However, he had never actually studied the ads.
Jordan ads from 1923 (top row) and 1927 (Old Car Advertisements)
The most famous Jordan ad was titled, “Somewhere West of Laramie,” but Bruce found himself paying more attention to some other ads, such as “The Vagabond Days Have Come.” He thought that the first two paragraphs of text were particularly evocative:
“Some happy mystic day in June when the soft green of early summer is lit by the golden sun — forget the town — its turbulence and fame — and bid the world good-bye.
Idle the twilight hours away in a Jordan, light-footed, silent, flying free — companions, chums, camp followers of spring.”
Bruce decided that he would try to capture the spirit of these ads but update them by tapping into the cultural zeitgeist of the 1960s. So he wove in a more sexual undertone. And whereas the Jordon ads tended to target women, this Pontiac ad would target men. Here’s his first draft.
His boss liked the approach but Pontiac management insisted on a more traditional focus of itemizing features (spiced up with bombast typical of recent Pontiac ads). So they kept the artwork but shoehorned in new text that emphasized the hidden windshield wipers and hood-mounted tachometer.
As it turned out, 1967 big-car output would drop 8 percent. Two-door models tended to take the biggest hits, with convertibles doing the most poorly. That wasn’t such a great performance, but intermediates were off by even more — 13 percent. In addition, this was a weak year for the auto industry as a whole, with domestic production down over 12 percent.
This led some of Bruce’s colleagues to declare the ad campaign a success at holding down losses. However, he still wondered: Might more evocative ads have helped sales? Or was it inevitable that Pontiac’s big cars would increasingly be seen as family haulers and luxo-barges that lacked the stylishness of intermediate two-door models?
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RE:SOURCES
- oldcaradvertising.com: Jordan (1923, 1927); Pontiac (1967)
- oldcarbrochures.org: Pontiac (1967)
“Ad Nauseam” parodies automotive ads and brochures. We start off with themes from actual ad copy and riff from there. For further discussion about what is real, go here.
Subtle (?) reference to the famous Jordan Playboy ad of the ‘twenties (“Somewhere West of Laramie”).
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