Essay 325

A story in Adweek reports:

“The True Agency has created a 30-minute original program for luxury carmaker Infiniti that features five black artists talking about design without once mentioning the brand.

“Nor are there any commercial breaks. Instead, the conversation ends after 25 minutes and segues into images of Infiniti's various models.

“Each artist, including oil painter Kehinde Wiley, dancer Diedre Dawkins and music producer-DJ Paul Miller, was chosen to represent a key attribute of a particular model. For example, industrial designer Stephen Burks suggests the spaciousness of Infiniti’s QX56, while Dawkins personifies the performance of the G35 sedan and movie director Euzhan Palcy the ‘vision’ of Infiniti M — all by discussing their craft in general, but not the models themselves.”

Please. Infiniti relates Black artists to luxury cars for 30 minutes. Gee, there’s a breakthrough concept. Most automakers wooing Blacks only push such contrived comparisons for 30 seconds.

The Adweek headline says, “Don’t Call it an Infomercial.” OK, we’ll call it shit.