Are We Being Taken for a Ride?

Are We Being Taken For a Ride?

By Janine Evans

Blog week 7:

This week’s lecture and readings about ‘stuff’ moved me to think about how companies are using the Kombi to promote their products and messages, including Telstra’s most successful ad campaign in history, The TAC Victoria’s road safety campaign and various goods and services used both locally and globally.  Recently Nick Xenophon used one to promote his Senate re-election.  The reason?  They appeal to rich and poor, young and old.  The Kombi, indeed VW itself is a globally recognized brand promoting consumerism and the potential to make many companies massive profits, including Volkswagen itself.  In his lecture, Wilkinson (2013) quotes from a book about consumerism, saying the notion of ‘Fordism’ was applied to encourage people to buy more.  The same can be said of using an iconic symbol that appeals to a broad range of the population who identify with products and services that brings ‘satisfaction’ by consuming.  Rather than being individuals we are commoditized even though the advertisers want us to feel ‘unique’ (Wilkinson, 2013).

Assembly Line in Germany

It’s ironic that the Kombi has become a symbol of value for corporations that want to be associated with the image.  They were mass-produced with variations of the same design and boasted engineering efficiency, were unsophisticated, cheap and practical.  These are generally not virtues usually seen associated with a product that might appeal to our postmodern individuality (Wilkinson, 2013). 

Dicken (2007) discusses in his article the complicated aspects of globalization, involving the particular geography of where people are located around the world and how this affects their standard of living.  The Kombi can also be used as a symbol of Fordism in the way it was manufactured and its contribution to the success of Germany today.  It was built to transport people and goods in an efficient manner to rebuild post war Germany.  Hitler would have been proud of his achievement in producing a vehicle cloned on a global scale considering his intention for the human race.

References:

Dicken, P. (2007). Winning and losing: An introduction, in Global shift: Mapping the changing contours of the world economy (pp. 437-453). London, England: Sage.

Wilkinson (2013). BA1002: Our Space: Networks, narratives and the making of place, Lecture 7: Stuff [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from http: learnjcu.edu.au

Image Source:

Assembly Line in Germany. Retrieved from: http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=311327