Joerg Sarbach/AP
DCL
Okay, so you're in the market for new car. You're interested in choosing a green auto option. And now that you've heard there's a very affordable hybrid car that's hitting dealerships across the US?the Honda Insight. Perhaps you're pondering the prospect of cruising greenly down the road in a brand new hybrid while reclining on a sunny beach this spring. Then, all of a sudden, you hear the unmistakable sound of an airplane engine, and there overhead is a Cessna jet flying over the water dragging a banner behind it that reads:
"The Hybrid for Everyone is Here: the Honda Insight"
You squint again to make sure you've read properly through the airplane's exhaust, and then can help but wonder: isn't this supposed to be a [i]green car[i]?
I didn't come up with this seemingly surreal scenario myself. No, according to a recent report from the New York Times earth, this is a very real part of Honda's ad campaign. So what to make of this paradoxically polluting way to sell a machine designed to preserve the environment.
It ushers in mixed feelings, to be sure. On the one hand, as noted by the Times, it's a very populist way to advertise—and a positive sign that carmakers are ready to throw themselves behind hybrids full throttle. Advertising actions like this indicate that people are more receptive than ever to the notion of driving a green car: hybrids are no longer for elitist big city types who smugly where green on their sleeves—it's now an everyman option fit for the BBQ-on-the-beach folks like you and me.
On the other hand, it detracts from the green message that drives hybrid car sales in the first place. If it's just another car, with the fact that it's hybrid relegated to the background, will it blend into the already crowded mid-priced sedan market?
In the long run, if Honda's everyman advertising gambit pays off, and millions more people end up owning affordable hybrids, then a few sky banners will seem like a minor price to pay for the huge heap of spared greenhouse gas emissions. But if Honda dilutes the car's identity as a hybrid altogether, few people will car about another two door, $20,000 sedan?and the sky banners will seem in hindsight downright ridiculous.
Guess we'll have to wait and see.
