If there is one industry that believes in advertising- but doesn’t understand it- it’s car dealers.
Formulaic, stupid, boring, and inept. If I have to hear “drive a little, save a lot” or “home of the low priced cars” one more time, I think I’m going to puke. Face it, they all sell the same thing as everyone else- a car- made in some factory far away- that’s exactly the same as the car their competitor has on their lot.
So, price and product are not the way to go. But, they still do.
Big egos also are hard at work in this business- so the owner of the dealership thinks that they need to be in the ad, on the marquee, and even stick their name on the back of your brand new car with some cheap sticker.
So, when I found these “Trunk monkey” ads at first I thought it was a production company poking fun at car dealers- but low and behold- it’s for real. Suburban Auto Group in Sandy Oregon is the home of the “Trunk Monkey”- a chimp who lives in your trunk and can do everything from buy off a cop to deliver your baby- I’m not kidding.
Entertaining- yes, enjoyable- yes, makes you want to visit the site- yes, makes you feel good about Suburban Auto Group- yes- and they even have a hip logo.
If only the car dealers in Dayton- especially our nearby neighbor, Frank Z Auto Group, who spends crazy money in the Dayton Daily News, would wake up to the power of good advertising.
Enjoy!

A little more research- and of course I find more to the story: The ads were created by R-west.com in Portland OR (their site sucks btw- all Flash- practically kills Firefox on the Mac) and then syndicated to other dealers. In Canada- they were banned for violence, and then PETA complained. For more than you can stand to know about Trunk Monkeys- see of course: trunkmonkey.com

Still wouldn’t hurt for Frank Z to take a look.

What do you think?