The marketers at Chevy totally have this urban millennial thing nailed down. The car manufacturer sponsored this promotional video for a Divisadero Microhood Art Walk held last week, along with the website The Bold Italic.
In this virtual tour of the microhood, local business owner Erin Fong gets into one of Chevy's electric Volts, driving an entire five blocks from the east side of Alamo Square to Divisadero. The drive is shown in a time lapse from the windshield. (Not shown: the hunt for a parking space.)
If the video leaves you puzzled and thinking, "That makes no sense whatsoever," you're not alone. Watching a video about driving is the complete antithesis of actually getting immersed in a microhood, an activity for which walking might be the best mode of transport. Perhaps that's why the event is called an art walk.
Apparently, this campaign to market cars to urban millennials is no isolated incident. It's part of General Motors' Drive the District campaign, targeting major cities around the country, including Austin, Boston, Chicago, New York, Portland, and Washington, D.C.. It's certainly no coincidence that these cities are both seeing an influx of young people, and also making it easier to get around without a car.
Perhaps Chevy doesn't know how out of touch they appear, trying to sell cars to young folks in one of America's most walkable neighborhoods. As this generation loses interest in owning and driving cars, auto industry advertising only seems to become more clueless.
Aaron was the editor of Streetsblog San Francisco from January 2012 until October 2015. He joined Streetsblog in 2010 after studying rhetoric and political communication at SF State University and spending a semester in Denmark.
