Maybe it’s just me.
Maybe I’ve grown cynical.
But I don’t see the innovation here.
I don’t see the ‘transformation masterclass’ you see.
All I see is an overworked and very conservative provotype (look it up) of an object that doesn’t come from the future but sits, squarely and heavily, in the present.
The creative, which is stunning, is like a GenAI regurgitation of every art school speculative design graduate show of the last 15 years, only far less interesting, pressed into the service of luxury automated environment-destroying capitalism.
It doesn’t speculate, denormalise, or dissonate.
It doesn’t depict or explain any preferable or plausible futures.
It’s an ad for a car.
On four wheels.
That looks like a piece of military hardware.
Whose aggressive design occupies at least twice as much public space as it needs.
Yes, they’ve done a great job in provoking a conversation. But about what? About whether a car should be pink? What else? The campaign exploits the language of design futures, not to critique or challenge, but to affirm and justify the status quo and all its failure. And we, nodding and slack-jawed, allow ourselves to be triggered into either adoring awe or angry outrage.
It is futures non-thinking:
- copy nothing
- think nothing
- do nothing
- hope for nothing
- demand nothing
- dream nothing.
Matthew Moran 