Beak-to-Beak

If there’s one ad campaign in the last few years that has really bothered me, it’s Mazda’s “Zoom Zoom”. I guess I just don’t get it, but there has to be a more rational explanation than that. Something about the whole thing just bothers me, almost as much as the reggaeton iO digital cable ad does (the one with the mermaids saying “FOUR FOUR FOUR EIGHT!”).

For starters, there’s that creepy little Mazda kid. Every time a car passes, he shows up to say “Zoom Zoom”, with a strange smirk on his face and dressed as if he’s just come from his mother’s funeral. Then it usually cuts to some overhead shot of the road, but the road has changed to spell the words “Zoom Zoom” when looked at from a god’s-eye view. And at some point in the commercial—whether toward the end or near the beginning—they start singing the song where it repeats “Yah zoom zoom zoom” over and over. The thing that bothers me most about that is the fact that there’s clearly an attempt by the advertiser to capitalize on some vague tribal nature of the chant. They make it sound as if “Zoom Zoom” is some sort of cultural thing shared only by native Africans and Mazda drivers. “Zoom Zoom” starts sounding like a status symbol and less like a childish way to say “This car can go fast.”

To make matters worse, they equip all new Mazdas with “Zoom Zoom” decals on the back window, as if the world needed any more proof that you’re a douchebag. It’s almost as bad as the Hummer I was stuck behind on my commute home the other day with a license plate that read “NO MPG”. As with the Hummer, any time I see a car with “Zoom Zoom” on the back window (my Dad’s excluded), I feel compelled toward an intentional rear-end.

Such was the case as I waited in the KFC drive-through this evening. I know that there should be no complaints, considering that I was not only buying Kentucky Fried Chicken, but was too lazy to get out of my car for it. Nonetheless, I was focused on the hilarious juxtaposition of the minivan in front of me and the employee smoking a cigarette against the wall. Although she was no more than eight feet from the minivan, neither party seemed to acknowledge the fact that they were operating both ends of the drive-through call box. I watched as she spoke into her headset, the words coming from her mouth and the compressed, difficult-to-understand speaker all at the same time. Ironically enough, the minivan had a bumper sticker that was simply two penguins facing each other and almost touching beak-to-beak. I saw the man and the KFC employee in a very similar situation and thought, “Is this what America has become?”

…Until I saw the “Zoom Zoom” sticker on the back of the van and got that damn jingle stuck in my head.

Tags: Funeral, KFC, Mazda, Minivan, Zoom Zoom