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advertisement: UW-Foundation

Drive home happy
Weighing style and sense in the quest for the perfect car

After scribbling the last needed signature, Harvey Briggs anxiously waited to put the keys in the ignition. Walking to his new car, a feeling of success washed over him. A click of the key snapping into place and the gentle buzz of the engine turning over teased his lead-heavy feet. “[I wanted] to get out and put the car through its paces,” Briggs says.

In 1985, at 25 years old, the newly married advertising executive bought his first BMW, a gray, 1982 320i two-door sedan. Never mind its used three-year-old lifespan. To Briggs it felt indulgent, sporty and powerful, yet the feelings of guilt would not subside. “I was probably stretching beyond my means to have this,” he says. 

Buying a new car is a major investment. When life begins and bills start to materialize out of nowhere, it might be more practical to get a sensible car rather than an indulgent one. Sometimes, though, getting what you want is getting what you need, and at that point, practicality and luxury go hand-in-hand. A car isn’t always just a mode of transportation - it often defines peoples’ standing in the social food chain. But for young professionals balancing their lives, the scale of auto buying can often tip toward status over affordability.

Briggs knows status. As the executive vice president and director of innovation at Lindsay, Stone & Briggs, a Madison advertising agency, he lives for generating a world where the consumer’s needs and wants remain top priority. According to www.lsb.com, a brand gets its power by creating meaning in peoples’ lives. Car manufacturers like BMW thrive off the brands they establish and aim to reach loyal and prospective consumers through emotional marketing.

“The main thing, I think, is advertising is about creating desire,” Briggs says. That desire compels car drivers into believing they are what they drive. It’s an unsaid American ideal. America is a competitive society. Emphasis is placed on who has what, the label sewn into the business suit, and a car’s hood ornament.

Michelle Nelson, an assistant professor who studies consumer behaviors in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UW-Madison, refers to this as an idea of the “extended self.” “The idea is that certain possessions become your identity,” she says. “So I think for a lot of people in American society, what you drive is who you are - either who you are now or who you want to be.” 

Briggs knows this ideal all too well.

“Status isn’t always just about spending more and well; it’s about reaching a certain ideal,” he says. This ideal drove him to purchase a BMW rather than a Ford Tempo for his soon-to-be extended family. As a self-proclaimed car guy, a vanilla sedan was against his self-concept. He admitted that buying a BMW was not a rational decision but justified his purchase because he simply wanted it. “What really drove me was the idea that I needed to be in a car, just for my own perspective, that didn’t conflict with who I thought I was,” he says, adding that being seen behind the wheel of an appliance car like a Ford rather than a BMW 'Ultimate Driving Machine', compromised his principles.

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hunk of junk
hunk of junk:Thinking about getting a new car? Know what you want and what you can afford.
photo: derek montgomery
 
 

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curb magazine 2005: balance for wisconsin's young professionals