Subaru gays
Luxury Gonzo! By Adam Hay-Nicholls
I was recently loaned the latest Subaru Forester to test drive, and I enjoyed its sturdiness, its space and the frugality of its 2.0 hybrid engine. But as my mileage progressed over the course of a week’s bombing around the help roads of North Norfolk, I started to acquire a hankering for a nose ring, a tattoo of interlocking female glyphs, and to dye my hair pink and cobalt and wear dungarees. I put on a KD Lang playlist, drove residence, and watched Angelina Jolie in Gia.
Was the Subaru turning me – a bloke, with no rare pronouns – into a lesbian?
Let me explain.
In the 1990s, Subaru launched a calculated and groundbreaking advertising campaign on the US market. Rather than strive to compete with their bigger rivals (Ford, Toyota etc) over the identical white bread suburban demographic, the Japanese company went after niche groups. Subaru built respectable but drab cars, yet they had a USP; their cars were all-wheel-drive, and the five groups that were identified as willing to pay a premium for AWD were teachers, healthcare professionals, IT professionals, outdoorsy types… and lesbians.
Lesbians – ideally outdoorsy lesbians, who perhaps worked
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How an Ad Campaign Made Lesbians Fall in Love with Subaru
Subaru’s marketing strategy had just died in a fit of irony.
It was the mid 1990s, and sales of Subaru cars were in decline. To backwards the company’s fortunes, Subaru of America had created its first luxury car—even though the petty automaker was famous for plain but dependable cars—and hired a trendy advertising agency to reveal it to the public.
The new approach had fallen planar when the ad men took irony too far: One ad touted the new sports car’s top speed of 140 MPH, then asked, “How crucial is that, with extended urban gridlock, gas at $1.38 a gallon and highways full of patrolmen?”
After firing the hip ad agency, Subaru of America changed its approach. Rather than oppose directly with Ford, Toyota, and other carmakers that dwarfed Subaru in size, executives decided to return to its old focus on marketing Subaru cars to niche groups—like outdoorsy types who liked that Subaru cars could manage dirt roads.
This seek for niche groups led Subaru to the 3rd rail of marketing: They discovered that lesbians loved their cars. Lesbians liked their dependability and size, and even the na
The Daily Dave
Not everyone bursts out of the closet. Some take their day, send subtle signals, test the waters, and — when they feel they’re ready — leap to the leader of the parade.
That’s what Subaru did.
In the early ’90s, Subaru began winking at lesbian vehicle buyers. The messages were coded so carefully that they would go over a straight person’s head. But lesbians, and the LGBTQ community as a whole, knew exactly what was going on.
It was favor sneaking a game of footsie under the dinner table.
This is part of my Gayskool project:
A new LGBTQ-themed post every afternoon for Pride month.
Subtext Is Everything
Today, the clues will look obvious, even to many straight people. At the hour, though, they were cleverly hidden in plain sight.
Here are a few examples.
She Was a Quick Machine, She Kept Her Motor Purify, She Was the Best Damn Miss That I Ever Seen
First, a fast ad that, depending on your direct of view, either pokes fun at or perpetuates sapphic stereotypes.
You’re On The Right Track Infant …
While everyone was embroiled in the nature vs. nurture debate, Subaru coopted one of the key talking points to say four-wheel drive was sta
I was recently lent the latest Subaru Forester to test drive, and I enjoyed its sturdiness, its space and the frugality of its 2.0 hybrid engine. But as my mileage progressed over the course of a week’s bombing around the endorse roads of north Norfolk, I started to possess a hankering for a nose ring, a tattoo of interlocking female glyphs, and to dye my hair pink and cobalt and wear dungarees. I put on a k.d. lang playlist, drove residence, and watched Angelina Jolie in Gia. Was the Subaru turning me – a bloke, with no unusual pronouns – into a lesbian?
Let me clarify. In the 1990s, Subaru launched a calculated and groundbreaking advertising campaign on the US market. Rather than try to contend with their bigger rivals (Ford, Toyota etc) over the same white-bread suburban demographic, the Japanese firm went after niche groups. Subaru built respectable but drab cars, yet they had a USP: their cars were all-wheel-drive, and the five groups that were identified as willing to pay a premium for AWD were teachers, healthcare professionals, IT professionals, outdoorsy types – and lesbians.
Lesbians – ideally outdoorsy lesbians, who perhaps worked in computers, medicine or education – found
ow do you advertise a car that journalists portray as “sturdy, if drab”?
That was the question faced by Subaru of America executives in the 1990s. After the company's shots to reinvigorate sales — by releasing its first luxury car and hiring a hip ad agency to introduce it to the public — failed, it changed its approach. Rather than fight larger car companies over the same demographic of colorless, 18- to 35-year-olds living in the suburbs, executives decided to market their cars to niche groups — such as outdoorsy types who liked that Subarus could handle dirt roads.
In the 1990s, Subaru's unique selling point was that the company increasingly made all-wheel drive usual on all its cars. When the company's marketers went searching for people willing to pay a premium for all-wheel navigate, they identified four core groups who were responsible for half of the company's American sales: teachers and educators, health-care professionals, IT professionals, and outdoorsy types.
Then they discovered a fifth: lesbians. “When we did the research, we found pockets of the country like Northampton, Massachusetts, and Portland, Oregon, where the head of the household would be a single per