Mercury’s ad agency, Weiner, Cox & Baltz, thought that it had come up with a clever solution to a lingering problem: the brand’s cars were primarily bought by women.
“Our data shows that women are more likely to buy a manly car than men are likely to buy a girly car,” company co-founder Jan Weiner concluded in a presentation to Lincoln-Mercury management. “That’s why we recommend that you adopt the slogan, “Mercury: The Man’s Car.”
Jan thought this was one of his better ideas, but it faced a curious form of opposition within his own company. For example, when he came to work one morning he found on his desk the following draft ad:
Jan didn’t know how to react to the draft. It was pure insubordination to change the slogan to “The Woman’s Car.” But once he cooled off a bit he had to acknowledge that the quality of the ad’s copy and graphics were pretty good.
At a staff meeting later that morning Jan slammed the draft ad onto the conference table and demanded to know who was behind it. No one came forward.
Fellow co-founder Wally Cox finally broke the silence by suggesting that he saw a way to adapt the draft’s basic approach to “The Man’s Car” theme. Here’s what he came up with:
Wally’s draft went on to gain approval from Lincoln-Mercury management. And as it turned out, total Mercury sales increased in 1967 despite a recession. Even so, the ad agency’s third co-founder, Harry Baltz, thought that this had more to do with the success of the new Cougar than the effectiveness of the ad campaign.
“Now that we’ve shown that Mercury has some balls, maybe we need to tone it down for 1968,” Harry told Jan as they were walking into the Grosse Pointe Athletic Club. “Wally’s data was pretty conclusive that women really hated those ads — and they buy a lot of cars.”
Also see ‘What happened when a secretary secretly wrote a Jaguar XK-E ad’
Jan felt a flash of anger when he realized that he was just outvoted. He wanted to keep the “The Man’s Car” campaign for another year. His big new idea was to link it with Time magazine’s “Man of the Year Award.”
“So you’re telling me that women are going to hold veto power over our work?” Jan stammered.
Harry leaned forward and put a hand on Jan’s shoulder. “The times are changing, my man — and they aren’t changing back.”
NOTES:
This post is a parody that was originally published on March 29, 2023 and expanded on February 3, 2025. For further discussion about what is real, go here.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- autohistorypreservationsociety.org: Mercury Cyclone (1967)
Wow! Talk aboht full instrumentation. It even has a speedometer! So the Cyclone didn’t have independent rear suspension?
Well, I did take some liberties in order to make the point that Detroit could have offered a car like this in the late-60s. And men may not have necessarily been the only interested buyers. The muscle car fad was arguably more of a guy thing but a real GT could have had broader appeal.
Ha! You almost had me going, except when I got to the ‘standard radial tires’ then I realized it was just another ruse. I quite like the ad better than the “man’s car” version anyway!
Well, it beats the Apperson appellation for the 1906 Apperson “Jack Rabbit” race car, called and advertised as the Apperson “Big Dick”! Now that’s a “man’s car”!
Yesterday, I was browsing a 1966 Ford Wagons brochure online and was surprised to see that both power front disc brakes and radial tires were listed as options. This made me want to check if the “man’s car” offered those options as well. In the 1967 Mercury full-line brochure, the options list did not include radial tires but power front disc brakes were standard as part of the Cyclone GT Performance Group option, among other features. PFDB were noted as standard equipment on the Marquis, Brougham, Park Lane and Colony Park, too. FoMoCo seems to have been offering disc brakes and radial tires well in advance of GM. I thought it most ironic that you could get PFDB on a 1966 Ford Country Squire but they weren’t even offered as an option on Oldsmobile’s 1966 Toronado (a car that truly needed them).
The options page of the Mercury brochure further condescends to women with this opening headline: “A man’s choice of options… designed with a woman in mind”.
Despite how we might view this today, there has long been a pervasive discriminatory attitude towards so-called women’s cars (that still persists) such as Subaru Outbacks and VW Cabriolets to name just a couple. Feminine continues to be perceived as weak in Detroit group think and that is why there are so few attractive cars and an overabundance of overwrought, over-aggressive, downright ugly cars, trucks and SUVs on the road. Every prospective new vehicle buyer is shown in ads to be a warrior of some sort. Roads are to be conquered and plundered. Even an obvious grandmother archetype who bids farewell to her old VW Golf in a new video campaign suddenly turns into a Formula 1 racer behind the wheel of her new VW EV. While I appreciate that women are astute enough to want more than mere transportation from their vehicles, I find it ludicrous that advertisers are portraying females as “power women” with a get-of-my-way-I’m-in-my-Jeep attitude. Obviously, and sadly, IMO, it seems to be working. And, so even though car companies and their ad agencies wouldn’t dare promote a new vehicle as a “man’s SUV/truck”, the implication is still there, stronger than ever.