Toyota and the Insects

The few, monopolized television stations of our country present some excellent commercials from time to time. There is, as a counterweight, an endless string of mediocre commercials that flood our screens daily. More than once I have reined in the impulse of my fingers on the keyboard, eager to praise the handful of good ones or criticize the thousand bad ones I see during the brief moments I sit in front of a television. I have decided that I will not take to writing about television or film, since there are already people who do that. Likewise, I decided not to write about the dead, however good and virtuous they may have been, since there are always more than enough pens when it is time to throw flowers to the dead. I have not yet broken this second decision, but I am about to break the first, because there is an advertising campaign that has wounded me deeply.

It is the latest advertising campaign for Toyota’s Tercel ’99. I have seen the commercial ads of this campaign in the newspaper La Prensa and on several television channels, and all its variants have produced in me the same sting. I consider that the whole campaign is based on an idea that is offensive, from several points of view, and that it deserves to be censured for its concentrated stupidity. The photography of the ads is excellent, but there are in them a theoretical error and a moral slip that ruin everything.

Theoretical error

From the point of view of kinematics, the campaign in question is nonsense. The central concept is: “The new and powerful 1,500 c.c. engine of the Tercel ’99 goes from 0 to 180… insects per second!” There are serious errors that invalidate this assertion. The abbreviation for cubic centimeters is not c.c. but plain cc, without periods. Moreover, the statement is dimensionally incorrect.

To compare the power of one sports car with another in a way the public can understand, the criterion used is the car’s acceleration from rest. It is said, for example, that such-and-such a car goes from 0 miles/hour to 100 miles/hour in 4.7 seconds. This measures the average acceleration of the engine in the first seconds of a run at full capacity. To go from an initial speed X (with dimensions of distance over time) to another speed Y (with dimensions of distance over time) the car requires a time Z (with the dimension of time). In short, it is said to go from so much distance/time to so much distance/time in so much time.

The joke of Toyota’s campaign consists in substituting insects for the conventional dimensions. It would be a valid substitution from the point of view of kinematics if it were used properly (which is not the case). Suppose we have a road that has a certain uniform number of insects scattered over each unit of length. If that were so, and if the car’s design is old-fashioned and not very aerodynamic, like that of the new Tercel ’99 according to the company’s own advertisements, the insects will keep smashing systematically against the car at a rate that will be proportional to the speed of the vehicle, that is, distance over time. There will be a proportionality between the expression in miles/hour and the expression in insects/second, since a constant of insects/mile would relate them. And this proportionality could validly be used in the aforementioned acceleration method as an expression of an engine’s power. But there is an error.

Whoever devised Toyota’s advertising campaign is ignorant of the rudiments of kinematics (for example, those taught in the fourth year of secondary school), for he made a mess of the joke, and in the process threw away the fortune the campaign cost Toyota. It would have made sense to say: “The new and powerful 1,500 cc engine of the Tercel ’99 goes from 0 insects/second to 180 insects/second in 3 seconds” (or however long it takes the Tercel to squash the poor bugs against its profile). But it said the stupid thing I quoted above, which I refuse to repeat for fear that ineptitude may be contagious.

An advertising professional should seek the advice of people who know the subject, to avoid launching such idiocy in public. It is also surprising that no Toyota engineer sounded the alarm.

Moral slip

When one tries to be clever, one runs the risk of becoming ridiculous. When one tries to be ironic, one runs the risk of being offensive. The Toyota company tried to be funny and ironic with its “new and powerful” advertising campaign, and in the attempt it became ridiculous and offended the Panamanian people.

It has made itself ridiculous by saying an absurd thing that makes no sense to anyone. And it has offended through its double standard. In a tiny box at the bottom of its ads, the company places a logo that says “Toyota cares for the Panamanian environment.” I can see how well they care for it. That is why we have only half an environment left. It must be that the insects that smash against the Tercel are not Panamanian insects, but Japanese ones, which come as an extra with the car (which makes no difference).

I remember seeing years ago an excellent commercial for a car that, as I recall, was American, and that said: “If you can’t tell the difference between the new aerodynamic design of the So-and-so (actually it said the car’s model, but I don’t remember it) and the competition’s design, then you are definitely not an insect.” As it said this, a brand-new So-and-so came racing down a road head-on toward an insect, and when it reached it, the flow of air over the aerodynamic silhouette of the So-and-so lifted the insect, and the car passed without harming it, and the insect went on flying happily until a competitor’s car (Toyota?) came down the same road and under the same circumstances smashed it against the windshield, with the ensuing splatter of yellow substance. That elegant way of expressing that an aerodynamic design is an advance in automotive technology in which that company takes an interest is a far cry from the cavemanlike, backward style of the anti-ecological “new and powerful” campaign for the Toyota Tercel, which boasts of the power of its engine to kill insects.

I have killed a great many insects with my car. Several dozen butterflies have met the end of their beautiful lives smashed against my windshield. I have even killed two dogs, two chickens, and a little bird. Each one of these killings was involuntary, and I suffer over them; it has never been by my will. Years ago I learned to value the life of all animals and plants. Everyone who drives knows that these accidents happen, and much more often in the case of insects. It is inevitable that cars kill some insects. It would be very beautiful to have cars that were like versions on wheels of Shimoda’s mystical airplane, in Richard Bach’s Illusions, but for now it is not possible.

It is one thing to kill an animal involuntarily while driving, and quite another to do it to show off power and then boast of having done it. “The more insects, the better!” the commercial seems to proclaim, showing a lack of sensitivity toward Nature.

In summary

I perceive Toyota’s campaign as defective, badly conceived, and in the worst possible taste. It is one more example of the result of a lot of money and resources invested in developing an empty idea. It is a disgrace to Panamanian advertising, and an insult to Panamanians.