The Hummer
I was listening to a presentation about the Hummer in a marketing seminar the other day, with a focus on the differences in perception and marketing for the original commercial vehicle and the newer H2.
The original was truly over the top, borderline legal, sold in very small quantities to very wealthy buyers such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, and grudgingly admired in the way a Ferrari Testarossa or Lamborghini is when strutting down the boulevard.
The H2 is smaller, built on a pedestrian large SUV chassis, priced in the middle five figures rather than early six figures, sold to anonymous suburban and urban-sophisticate strivers, and generally loathed in the way malaria or scabies are when strutting through the population.
Why? What is the key differentiator? Why do people make obscene gestures at H2 drivers while all but salute those behind the wheel of an original Hummer? (Full disclosure: my ride is a Nissan but I don't make obscene gestures to anyone but little old ladies who won't get out of my way.)
Rationally speaking, the H2 is a more responsible vehicle in terms of gas mileage, potential damage infliction, and general hubris. Yet its vastly larger ownership makes it a vastly more noxious overall presence, and in a time of general nervousness about the global oil situation, this presence makes it the poster child for a certain swinish obliviousness often found on the smug faces of all large-body SUV drivers.
Surely there are bigger problems than clueless narcissists getting 12 miles to the gallon rather than the 25 or so expected by the left-leaning anti-H2 crowd, no?
Then it hit me. The Hummer and H2 represent the ancient tension between the Platonic ideal and the Aristotelian reality found in Western Civilization.
The original Hummer is the Platonic status symbol, the Platonic Zeus ex machina, driven by archetypal successful people, Gods on Earth whom we admire and want to be. The Hummer lives in the Pantheon.
The H2, on the other hand, is merely a niche-marketed categorical reality, agnostically designed and sold to members of a hoi polloi admired by no one except themselves. It reflects an unflinching Aristotelian reality that this is what people are all about, this is what they drive, baby, and romance and idealism be damned. The H2 lives in the real world.
This tension has caused a psychosis in Western Civilization for millennia. Inject an Abrahamic Judeo-Christianity that has absorbed, integrated, and reflected much classical learning and opinion through Talmudic and Pauline study over the generations while remaining judgemental to its core, and hey, no wonder people start flipping the bird at H2s!
The presentation I saw the other day was presented by students from two distinct Asian cultures, and I had to wonder, what are they thinking way down inside about this whole matter? Western minds, whether they know it or not, have the Platonic/Aristotelian tension rooted in their speech patterns, belief systems, and everyday impressions of life.
What do the roots of Eastern minds have to offer on this subject? What do these roots imbue Eastern minds with when it comes to buying things?
As I continue my search for Ur-Marketing principles, these questions will be on my mind.
10:29:54 PM 
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