Yet again, a manufacturer is releasing an image which shows a bit of a car to generate excitement at the prospect of seeing . . . the rest of the car. Wasn’t there a board game like this, where you had to guess the whole image as little pieces were revealed? Well, I find the hide-and-seek, slow-reveal automotive press release shtick an inherently infantile practice. Resisting the urge to blame Autoblog for this outbreak of electronic peek-a-boo, thrilled as they must have been with the 235 “teaser” shots provided by FoMoCo in the run up to the entirely predictable 2010 Mustang, I will not resist the urge to call this technique the autoblogospherical equivalent of dickless porn. Do I really care what a new fender vent looks like?
Show me the whole damn thing or I’m switching to ESPN. By the same token, you’d kinda hope that anyone who could stump-up the money for a new Rolls Royce 200EX wouldn’t be spending his or her day trolling the internet for something, anything to give them something, anything, an idea what the car will look like in Geneva. What’s your take on this titillation technique? Does it frustrate you, help you prepare you for a cargasm, both or neither?
It’s stupid. And in the days of print media, it (almost) never happened. But with blogs being the norm now, what can you do? Every blog ever on any subject starts out the same way — frequent updates with fresh content featuring various new opinions and/or points of view. Eventually two things happen. First, the blog author(s) tire of making a half dozen posts a day about the same old crap. Then the blog readers get sick of reading the same re-hashed opinions on the same old crap. At that point, the blog becomes a slave to the press release in order to give the author(s) a break and give the readers something new to read.
Once you’re a slave to the press release, the providers of the press releases can make you dance like a monkey. And they like monkeys to do the teaser dance, for obvious reasons.
I’m not sure I know of a better way to do things. You can take a stand on stop passing on the teasers, but then you risk losing your audience to more “active” blogs. And as a reader, it’s pretty easy to just breeze past them in my RSS reader. So… dance, monkey, dance.
Show the whole car from four sides and let’s get on with things. It’s a freakin’ Rolls Royce for crying out loud, who really cares?
No opinion on the teasers.
However, “200EX” is a terrible name for a Roller. “Phantom”, good. “Corniche”, even better. It needs to be something just difficult enough to pronounce to scare away the proletariat.
“200EX” sounds like a base model Hyundai. Or a Whirlpool.
Wait a second! For the classic/antique car buff, this is a “What Is Wrong With This Picture”: the RR logo is in red and that’s wrong. When Rolls and Royce started the company in 1906, the RR was red, but either because of Royce’s death in a freak airplane testing accident or because it clashed with bodywork colors requested by clients, it has been black since 1933.
It’s a maddening practice but how else would you pique curiosity?
I suppose teaser shots are the automotive equivalent to a movie trailer. You want to give a taste and attract interest but you don’t want to give away the plot.
Also, the teaser shots are in part how the automotive culture deals with new designs. You see it in their response to spy photography. Car companies have always been paranoid about revealing cars before planned introductions. Hence the camo cladding on preproduction test mules and closely cropped teaser shots.
Finally, there are proprietary information protection issues. While automotive designers borrow elements and are affected by trends and fads, they still don’t want to see a new signature design element show up on a competitor’s product before theirs gets to market.
Some teaser shots are good. The recent Tesla Model S teaser gave a good idea what the front profile looks like – enough to see that Franz & Co. have created an attractive shape.
Grille looks like a 1980’s Cadillac.
“200EX” sounds like a base model Hyundai. Or a Whirlpool.
I’ll have to check, but I think that might be the name of the $79 Norelco razor I bought last year. Yet another company falling in line with the stupid alphanumeric model naming craze.
As to the teaser business, it completely bores me and I normally complete ignore those pix.
Esquire does the same teaser bit with a woman in their “Sexiest Woman Alive” feature. I ignore that as well.
It’s a sad day when Rolls has nothing left in the book-o-names and has to resort to numbers. I mean, who the hell sits back and says “hmmm, yeah – 200EX – I like it!”? Idiots. Same goes for Ford’s fascination with every model possible starting with an F. Don’t get me started on Mercury. I think I’d avoid buying their damn cars just to make a point MKNosale.
This is stupid. It’s also stupid with the photos they put on the official sale website for the car. Again, closeups of headlights and doorhandles and logos. That makes no sense!
This kind of promo material is indeed irritating. However this one shows a lot more than usual (you couldn’t even tell what part of the car it was from the Mustang ‘photos’). I see that the new RR will have Phantomesque headlights though slanted, with new low beams or whatever kind of beams they are. The grille is smaller, flatter and so far less-attractive than the Phantom’s, and the lower intakes also seem to be a lot bigger (mesh). Seems the titanium hood will still be optional. I’m looking forward to seeing if the new V12 is present (and surely it will be).
steronz: except that there isn’t really a better alternative, and to breeze is to not care.
John Horne and sean362880: the two-door Phantom concept was called 101ex, etc etc. The production version will have a ‘real’ name.
1. 200EX? I suppose Ghosn is somewhat honored to have a Rolls named in a way that hearkens to a Nissan sport coupe (I think they had the 200SX back in the 80’s and 90’s, right?)
2. On the subject of teaser shots, this whole debacle comes from the 1950’s, back in the day when the new Chevy would show up in the dealer covered in a big dropcloth. Occasionally, you’d see a shot in the paper with a fender revealed, or a wheel. In the current day, I think the whole thing is inspired by the rags such as CD and MW, who buy the spy shots from the car-parazzi’s, who troll the roads near the proving grounds and OEM HQ’s looking for a vinyl-cladded test mule.
RF…if you don’t like the shots, it seems kind of disingenuous for you to keep posting ’em on the site. Personally, I’m sort of -meh- on the whole issue….I glance at the pix, but it is not what I come to the site for….I only read the articles……
Seriously. Every bit as bad as if TTAC posted 1/2 an article at a time, just to generate more traffic. Glad you’ve stayed above it.
Yes, getting just a piece at a time is annoying.
And the piece they’ve shown us doesn’t look like a Rolls-Royce should look. The grill should be upright, not wide and low. The headlights should be round, not angry-looking narrow slits. This looks like it belongs on a Hummer. The designers should take a look at http://www.rrab.com/oct08.htm
or the others on that site.
I think they had the 200SX back in the 80’s and 90’s, right?)
Mark, you’re right, it was the 200SX. Back in 1980 my folks were shopping for a small, “sporty” car and were strongly tempted by this puppy. It was pretty advanced for the time: fuel injection, twin spark plugs per cylinder, sharp-looking… I need to Google this car :-)
Let’s see, the name is 200EX, the grill and lights are squarish, and the grill bars are vertical. I think it is great that Rolls is finally building a pick up.
ONLY THE CONCEPT’S NAME IS 200EX.
was into it when i was 12, far too jaded now.
All Rolls-Royce concepts (the few that there have been) have had the “EX” name.
This teaser picture is pointless because it doesn’t really tease anything, because it looks like the new Phantom Coupe and Drophead Coupe. Besides, Autoblog just posted all the pictures…
Stewart Dean’s right. What’s up with the red logo? I thought R-R valued tradition.
Shucks.
You’ve condemned cheerleaders. You’ve condemned booth babes. Now you’re condemning teasers.
Next thing you’ll be starting Death Watches or something.
I hate teasers. For anything. And the media is the worst offender.
On radio and television shows, they tell you the teaser at the beginning of the hour, then every time they go to a commercial and each time they come from a commercial. You have to wait until the end of the show/newscast/program/next-day to hear the actual content.
The worst is the evening news. They bleat out how important such-and-such topic is, then they say “more at 11” or “get all the details tomorrow at 5”. My father used to say, “if it’s THAT important, why not just tell me now?”
It’s okay to give a quick run-down at the beginning of the hour of what you’re going to cover, but don’t hammer me over the head at each commercial break with a topic that you’re only going to spend 30 seconds on at :57 after the hour.
The teaser now officially has the OPPOSITE effect on me. I immediately fire up my IE or Firefox and look up the damned article for myself. Whether or not I find it, I usually promptly change the channel. I don’t hear the commercials, because I refuse to go back.
I short circuit the business model when I find another source for the story content. And I love that.
Don’t get me wrong. I understand the business model, and advertisements do not offend me. But teasers are insulting to me, so I won’t have any of that!
IT’s just vulgar , a German appropriation of what a Roll’s should look like !
Thanks a lot.
Your use of the phrase “dickless porn” has officially banned your site from my workplace.
Now what do I read at lunch?
well Robert,
its always annoyed me to be honest, with this technique when you get to the show, you already have seen everything that needs to be seen. the old days where you would be blown away are long gone. i think it’s about time they return…
additionally, with this technique, press days at autoshows have become precessional, and all about the people and the plans rather than the cars. and to be honest i’m more a car guy whatever happens behind the scenes is for the realms of the financial times or TTAC for that fact. but when it comes to auto show unveilings, i’d rather not know what’s under the sheets untill i see it.