Chevy Leans on Mellencamp, Americana for New Silverado Commercials

Chevrolet will launch a new ad campaign Sunday night during NBC’s primetime football coverage. Called “Our Country. Our Truck.,” the campaign features a new song — appropriately titled “Our Country” — by rocker John Mellencamp and a slew of images that conjure up rural and blue-collar America. The final ads are as benign as Mom and apple pie, but both The New York Times and automotive blog Jalopnik reported on earlier versions they were shown only a few days ago that also featured graphic imagery of 9/11 and nuclear explosions that ad execs said showed off both the good and bad of the country’s history.

Luckily for Chevy, the flub was corrected after reports surfaced online, and the ads will now feature just positive imagery. One can only imagine the outcry that would follow a car company trying to profit using tragic images relating to 9/11.

There’s a whole other take on the nuclear bomb images. The online reports suggested a correlation between the bomb imagery from the end of World War II and the fact that Japanese competition is expanding in the full-size truck market, notably the upcoming redesigned Toyota Tundra. Someone at an ad agency somewhere should be looking in their inbox for a pink slip any day now.

Related:
$400 Million and Mellencamp to Usher in New GM Trucks
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