Ram This Truck
Being beaten by the police in Birmingham wasn’t staged. Being on the FBI’s watch-list wasn’t staged. Being shot on a motel balcony wasn’t staged. Unlike Ram Trucks’ fake soldier coming home from a fake war to hug his fake child in a fake airport, a real person fought a real war for real human dignity that continues to claim real lives every single day.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Baptist minister and a prominent activist in the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s. Best known for his “I Have a Dream” speech, King practiced a philosophy of non-violence in his quest for equal rights before he was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
In his lesser-known sermon “The Drum Major Instinct,” King decried the consumerism that he saw as destructive to people’s economic and psychological well-being. Though used in a recent car commercial, he preached “And I got to drive this car because it's something about this car that makes my car a little better than my neighbor's car.” King inverts the conventional wisdom of keeping up with the Joneses to reveal how living above one’s means is destructive to individuals, families, and their larger communities.
Assuming that the producers of Ram Trucks’ “Built to Serve” Super Bowl commercial were aware of the entire speech they quoted from, it is a cynical manipulation of an audience of millions to make Dr. King a spokesman for a product he never intended to sell. Though unmentioned in the ad, according to the manufacturer’s website the list price of the Ram Truck 1500 is described as “starting at $31, 695.” The US Census claims the median household income for a family in the United States was $57,619 in 2016. To use the concept of community to sell a product that costs more than half of the median household income of its target audience is destructive in exactly the way King warned against in the parts of his sermon that were discarded by the Ram Trucks advertisers, particularly the idea of living above one’s means.
Calling themselves the “Chicago-based boutique ad agency Highdive,” this company prides itself on “brave thinking” as represented in ads for Skittles, State Farm, Capital One, Nike, McDonalds, and other recognizable companies. High interest credit cards, unhealthy fast foods, and shoe companies that use child labor were not mentioned anywhere in Dr. King’s dream, but they do represent the drum major instinct that King preached against falling prey to.
The “Built to Serve” ad was seen by millions of people worldwide and was the talk around watercoolers and websites the Monday after the Super Bowl LII, but Highdive’s notion of bravery is antithetical to Dr. King’s idea of bravery, because it preys on the egotism that sells expensive cars rather that selflessness that its deceased and unwitting spokesman lived and died for.
The advertisers whom Dr. King called “those masters of verbal persuasion” have only gotten more masterful. Wiping sweat from their brows, carrying a child from a blazing automobile, praying before a football game, handing-out turkeys in the rain – these images look so real that I felt them in my heart before my brain could begin to decipher them. And then I felt used, not persuaded but manipulated.
Of course another ad came on before I had time to process the last one. I might not buy the truck, but I might buy the chips, the detergent, or go see the movie that was advertised. I need some way to get to work, something to eat, some way to clean up, and something to do with my time after all.
One should not be surprised that a league that won’t allow its players to exercise their right of free speech would also be tone-deaf on other civil rights issues as well. Hell, let’s just play some football.
To those who would claim the ad did its job by gaining so much attention, and that it got America talking about MLK’s legacy again, I would suggest that getting attention for a crass bastardization of the meaning of service is a disservice to our history and to the company represented by the ad. To those who would say it’s just a commercial and not worth being upset about, I would quote cosmologist Brian Swimme who says “at a deeper level what we need to confront is the power of the advertiser to promulgate a worldview, a mini-cosmology, that is based upon dissatisfaction and craving.” This cosmology is the opposite of Dr. Kings’ view in that a person is defined more by what they own than by what they do. Swimme continues by saying “consumerism has become the dominant world faith of every continent of the planet today.” This faith is as far from the belief of that humble man represented on that church that a Ram Truck is seen driving out of town. Yes, Ram drove that church far out of town.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and the Highdive ad agency hoped that the Super Bowl audience would respond to this ad through our own egocentrism rather than metacognition. The advertiser knew that images of churches, soldiers, firefighters, and dogs in distress would trigger viewers’ self-interest before critical reflection would kick in. A viewer should ask how many free turkeys he is going to hand out in the rain, how many churches he is going to drive out of town, or if he can pick-up that family member returning from combat in the car that he owns now. I will admit though, as an admirer of Dr. King, that any use of his voice to sell a product will probably be met with some emotional and critical rejection from me.
Responding to questions from the Washington Post, Eric D. Tidwell, manager of the King Estate, approved use of King’s voice after assuring that the ad met “standard integrity clearances.” This integrity clearance sounds more like legal loophole language than the heart full of grace that King said was all one needed to serve. I would argue that Ram Trucks are not built to serve, but built to sell, and that Mr. Tidwell was looking to get paid as well. It has been a long time since Dr. King called on our better angels, and the use of his voice, his words, and his spirit to sell a truck could be called an assassination of his character, and a neutralization of his leadership as vile as any ordered by J. Edgar Hoover’s Counter Intelligence Program aimed at eliminating Dr. King in the 1960s.
A great man’s words were made empty by being converted into a sales pitch. No, you don’t need to know the history of Greek philosophy or the principles of physics to serve as Dr. King told his congregation that night fifty years before this commercial aired, but you do need to know when you are being taken advantage of. You need to know when your heart is stirred in order to stir your wallet. You need to know who you are without that fancy truck or other material trappings, even more now than when Dr. King’s audience needed to know it in 1968.