Donald Trump - A Helpful Honda Dealer Dispensing Random Acts of Helpfulness
If you live in Southern California, you probably heard of the Helpful Honda Dealer ad campaign, which features Honda salespeople performing "random acts of helpfulness." The ads often feature a sympathetic individual who lacks funds to send their kid to a camp or buy gifts for Christmas. Honda provides the funds for the individual, and the individual is very appreciative and thankful.
The random act of helpfulness does not structurally improve the lives of the people helped, and is nothing more than a momentary reprieve from a systemic shortage of funds. Yet, the ad campaign does generate good press for Honda given its simplistic focus on personal stories without any discussion of the larger problems being faced by the people. Indeed, the campaign allows Honda to swoop in, write a check, and get out without any responsibility for the larger issues that have placed the helped in the situations they are in.
President Obama did not engage in random acts of helpfulness. Saving the auto industry, passing the ACA, pulling the economy out of the deepest recession since the Great Depression were difficult efforts to systemically improve the lives of millions of Americans.
In contrast, President Elect-Trump seems to relish in engaging random acts of helpfulness that would make a Helpful Honda Deal proud. Rather than deal with systemic issues relating to the loss of manufacturing jobs, Trump has shown a fondness to swoop in for a photo-op, pay a multi-million ransom to "save" a portion of the jobs being outsourced, then rush out without addressing the broader issues leading to the loss of manufacturing jobs.
Does Trump deal with retraining and education of workers? Does he try to perhaps develop industries like clean energy that could help replace certain industries that might be growing obsolete like coal production? No. Instead, Trump seems content to be a helpful Honda Dealer looking for his next photo-op.
http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/secret-weapon-gains-traction-honda-helpful-95236
LOS ANGELES Now a year since its inception by creative director Dick Sittig, Southern California Honda Dealer's "Honda Helpful" campaign is gaining traction, according to Pat Adams, managing director of Secret Weapon Marketing.
The independent Santa Monica, Calif., agency's estimated $25 million local campaign is the first launched by a major Honda dealers group since 2006, when American Honda Motors, Torrance, Calif., eased 12-year restrictions on dealer advertising formerly derived from the automaker's lead shop, independent RPA.
Launched last February, Sittig built the broadcast part of the campaign around humorous situations wherein Honda dealers, out to demonstrate their gratuitous honesty, are asked to do ridiculous chores by potential Honda customers, a psychological reversal of dealer abuse. To give the effort seasonal twists, during Halloween, for example, ads revolved around dealers at parties wearing their signature blue shirts as being dressed in costume.
The insight at work is simple, Adams explained. "People don't like coming into dealerships," he said. "Since 1976, car dealers have polled as the least trustworthy people, until recently when telemarketers took over."
