Dark Edition SUVs: Striking Aesthetic or Problematic Messaging?

“The dark side of daddy.” “Dark rules.” “Black storm.” These are not one-liners from a Batman movie or the Armageddon sequel. These are actual advertising lines for automobiles in India. They could have easily been mouthed by Hannibal Lecter or the Joker. But no, they have been thought out by advertising agencies against specific campaign briefs shared by marketers.

Though I am personally not a great fan of the black colour on a car in an ecosystem like India’s, it is a popular choice alongside white and silver. Black is seen as more premium, very popular for more expensive cars, especially the SUV body style. Guess the fact that one has to take greater care of a black car accords you a higher status.

Therefore, the obsession for automakers to come out with “all-black” editions, right from the brawny Mahindra Scorpio N to the entire Tata range to the tiny and quirky MG Comet EV. But advertising and communication are more “sinister” than status. And sometimes just plain silly.

“Let there be dark.” Really? Seriously?! Where really is the expected sensibility and sensitivity in communication? One need not accentuate brawn by using overtones of the darker side of life. What really does daddy’s dark side look like? What really happens when ‘dark’ rules? Does the marketer really pay heed to the subliminal undercurrents of the communication and the potential fallout? I do not think so; otherwise, such advertising and posturing would not have happened in the first place.

One may argue that “the customer loves it, so…”. My counter is that the customer might want many things in life that are not the most civil, palatable and socially acceptable, yet it is the duty of the marketer to be mature enough not to add fuel to such suppressed flames. There is enough social strife, and the last thing one would want to see is an automobile, of all things, riding the wave of alpha masochism.

The auto marketer has the responsibility of applying filters to every piece of communication and visual imagery. Anyway, we revel in making our cars fly across deserts, jump over mountains and dive into water. These are stereotypical signs of command and conquest. Adding a deliberate dark side to the positioning caters more to animal instincts than being one with nature.

A psychoanalyst would say that such acts are the outcome of inherent deficiencies and insecurities of the individual creating such imagery. There are suppressed complexes that lead to such thinking in the first place. I just hope that’s not so with the marketers who create such campaigns, but just one-off deviations. Not the deviant.