A Snowball's Chance in Hummer

In their coyly comedic way, ads for Hummer's H3 have often tried to present the vehicle as a hybrid, if you will, of life's great opposing forces: male/female, war/peace, even rightwing/leftwing. Last year, for instance, a nice, tofu-buying guy at the grocery checkout is so humiliated at the sight of a manly man piling up slabs of beef in line behind him, that he runs out and buys a Hummer. Tofu Boy drives off smiling and, virility now coexisting with vegan virtue, chomping a carrot. The tagline, "Restore your balance," was originally "Restore your manhood." (An early '90s ad did the flipside more persuasively: Two women are snickering at the "shortcomings" of men who drive ostentatious autos, but they positively swoon over a dude getting out of a humble Hyundai, one gal gushing, "I wonder what he's got under the hood.")

In Hummer's 2006 Super Bowl ad the question is, What's she got in her belly? A city-destroying girl Godzilla is domesticated and impregnated by a gentle Iron Giant-type robot. Their love child, presumably the perfect blend of raw power and peaceful technology, is a bright red H3, a "Little Monster."

But H3's most recent spot, throwing all blends, balances, and easy-to-use symbolism out the window, crashes headlong into a subject much hotter than sex.

For his school show-and-tell, a boy opens a beverage cooler and awes his classmates with something they've apparently never seen: a snowball. Then we see his family Hummering back from a vacation in the snow-covered, Alpine mountains; the boy is beaming in the backseat holding his frozen souvenir. The tagline, "Go and Tell," fades into the familiar Hummer end-shot of the big blue marble seen from outer space.

Can this ad really be as self-immolating as it seems? It makes you think of H3's low-mpg role in greenhouse gases (not to mention, it implies that Hummer's heating system doesn't work).

Is the kid rescuing a bit of snow from the global warming that Hummer helps promote? Is the only way your kid will ever know snow is if you buy the only SUV that can haul ass to the icy outlands?

Or maybe the message is more outright GOP: There is no global warming, folks, and we'll bring home the powder to prove it. Even if we have a bit of "climate change," no big deal: Life will go on, people will multiply, and snow will become such a precious relic, it'll sell for more than oil. Cool.

The least likely explanation is that Hummer is unaware of the ad's enviro-political implications and the kid just lives in Florida.

But perhaps a slush of mixed messages is the point. In all the read-into-it-whatever-you-want confusion, Hummer parent company GM may be hoping that viewers do associate H3 with global warming (GW, GM, hmmm)--but in a good way. Most people will sensibly assume that Hummer would never advertise its contribution to global warming--and alludes to it only because the company must be doing something somehow to ameliorate it. Not true, but such an impression grows not illogically from the continuing Hummer=Arnold equation. At first, Schwarzenegger's fleet of Hummers belched pollution with manful pride, but the new, greener Gov has converted one of his gas guzzlers to biofuel and another to hydrogen. Few but he could afford such eco-monsters, but they make for a more ostentatious show-and-tell than a mere Prius.

Anyway, the ad may already be having an effect, though not necessarily in sales. In January, weeks after the spot began running a detective in Portland, Ore., claimed his eyeglasses were broken by an H3-driving man hurling a snowball out the window. The alleged thrower denies doing a drive-by, but the detective, who since sued the driver, insists he saw the H3's "dashboard lined with snowballs."

Coincidence, or commercial?