The RV Industry Association, through its Go RVing marketing program, has debuted some new radio commercials that promote RVing over other ways to travel.
The one below features snippets of conversations from tourists in Time Square in New York City. “It smelled a little bit funky outside,” one person says. The commercials ends with “Go on a real vacation, go RVing.”
Listen to the 30-second commercial by clicking the image below. It looks like it’s a video, but it’s just audio. After you listen, please answer the poll that follows. What did you think of it? Do you believe it would be effective in persuading someone to take up RVing?
So what do you think? Please leave a comment.
This commercial makes zero sense.
Well the ad is poor at best and unless rv manufacturers start building quality units nobody will want to rv
i see all these tourism commercials and Rv tourism and think to myself….What? non resident fees and national park entrance fees.. .and on one hand they want you to come but on the other hand they don’t want you to come. it’s like calling Cybil for a reservation….you don’t know who you are going to get
That commercial is like many I see on TV in the last number of years. I realize that most commercials today are not aimed at this old guy, but when a commercial ends, I turn to my wife and ask: “What were they selling?” It kinda scares me that there is a mindset / language that I do not understand.
Seems pretty lame to me
Lots of folks showing their age and biases in these comments. Like it or not, the world has changed. Simply put, this commercial will be very effective for the target audience — which is no one reading this website. That’s the point. They’re targeting folks who aren’t currently RVers. I guarantee you, the people who put this ad together did their homework and tested this script before releasing. Nothing is left to chance.
Well said. We are not the target audience.
Let’s hope it gets a few kids out of the city and exposed to nature.
I’m confused. What do they mean by “No alleys?”
I thot that kind of interesting too. We have no alleys down here where I live either. Where I lived in the mid-west we had alleys where we would access the back of the property and a place to set out our garbage to be picked up. Chicago even had alleys in downtown to receive deliveries and to set out garbage therefore keeping the streets clean and neat. New York City deliveries stop traffic to deliver goods to the front of the buildings and the garbage is in bags sitting on the sidewalk to be picked up. It is rather nasty downtown NYC.
I love alleys! Have them in Great Falls MT where the trashcans sit and garage entrances are. Hate houses that are mostly garages when you look at them from the street.
If we had any children, then I likely would have gone with the last answer about a 7th grader. I wonder what NYC’s ad campaign to rebut this ad will be? I bet it will be more interesting. Maybe Go RVing would be better served to identify campgrounds that could be easily expanded for a few dollars and put their ad money there. Seems creating more positive camping experiences would be more effective than this commercial. Word-of-mouth advertising can be pretty effective.
When they were saying “Lots of people” they were already referring to RVing, right???! 😉
By the poll response and majority of the comments so far here, reflects something I’ve noticed reading this newsletter over the years.
A bitterness and grumpiness seems to rear its ugly head amongst those who seem to have a need to share their thoughts here.
Cheer up folks this is not a war zone.
Agreed. I didn’t realize how many people with hostile and ugly thoughts were in the RVing population. It’s sad, and it’s starting to make me leery of people I see in real campgrounds.
Sorry that your bubble has burst. Everyone that RVs does not see the world through your eyes. I’m 100% confident that some if what gives you pleasure, also gives me pleasure but I am just as confident that some things that make you sad, make me laugh and equally as true, some things I find upsetting, give you joy. It is such a beautiful dynamic of being human. You may hate children, I may love them. You may love dogs, and I am free to hate them (I do not hate dogs, example only). Our life’s experiences inform our emotions and your life experiences are very different than mine. I do know through all of it one thing tho, that I wish you nothing but peace and love. Different as we may be.
We were asked for our opinions of the commercial, and people are giving their opinions. “Bitterness and grumpiness”? I think the folks below have shared their observations. Reality is not all unicorns and roses. There are slobs out there in the camping world, and many are tired of it. Just as many of us are tired of how motorists litter. Not all motorists, but enough to clutter the landscape. And the observations of too-few campsites already are accurate, not ‘bitterness and grumpiness”.
The irony in your grumpy post about grumpy posts is truly grumpy, so, Cheer up yourself. Not everyone sees the world through your eyes. Things that make you grumpy might me smile which you may interpert as me being grumpy when in fact the source of your frown may be a source of my smile. Do we all need to see the world through the lense of Wayne?
I hope it is NOT effective. Too much overcrowding already. RVs used to be a special secret. With things as they are now, I don’t want to see more.
The RVIA should be spending money on promoting manufacturers to build better product, not trying to get more people into spaces that don’t exist
Amen!
Second vote, Amen !! 👍🏻
You are exactly right! Now, that would be a good ad!
My understanding is the RVIA is essentially owned/run by the RV manufacturers (and maybe dealers/campgrounds), not the other way around. Of course these businesses want to promote selling RVs, not improving quality. Money money money!
As a ‘retired’ radio personality… my first reaction was…. ‘waste of time and $$$’…. by the time the ‘call to action’ arrived… most listeners would no doubt already be ‘tuned out’… based on the recent history of RV marketing… it’s another Madison Avenue failure… jus’sayin’
Yup. Same here. 50 years in radio recently retired and this just sounds like white noise.
All good comments, but, I live too near to NYC, and let me tell you, the LAST thing I want to see is those 13,000,000 concrete jungle-lovers leaving their beloved dystopia to visit my back yard.
Exactly what I was thinking…
Gobbledygook. Did it take even five minutes to come up with this? Worthless. Waste of airtime that could better be spent hawking Apple watches or some other tech that New Yorkers lust after.
People in New York City are not going to be RVers, the concrete jungle is too appealing to them, they wouldn’t know what to do if fresh clean air was available to breathe, if the only sounds they heard was chirping birds, if their wasn’t any skyscrapers blocking their view of the sky. No playing RV ads to New Yorkers is like preaching to the choir.
You do know what the term “preaching to the choir” means, right? It means trying to motivate people who are already believers. That said, I think there are plenty of city folks who are wanting to experience the outdoors and RVing is one option. Will this ad be effective? Only time will tell.
Most of this commercial is wasted dialogue. In ALL forms of advertising you need to grab people’s attention. This fails miserably. They need to hire a new agency with experience in outdoor promotion.
I get that they’re attempting to appeal to younger generations. No alleys? So, city folks who are tired of collecting knick-knacks in overcrowded city get-away vacations need to leave their comfort zone and what – go take a hike? Can’t they simply do that through VBRO or AirBnB? Visit a nearby hiking trail? Much faster and cheaper? Visit a local state park without the RV in tow. And where do these city folk with alleys park their RV’s – just to use them 1-2 weeks per year. Also, this younger crowd heads to the country and no more internet and poor cell signal, whole generations that are inseparable to their electronic gadgets. How disconnected can the RV industry be from reality? If any of these younger folk want to disconnect, get out in the wild, and take a hike, they would do so – on their own.
The end, the slogan is great, but that nonsense in the beginning, just can’t get behind that.