Take a look at this SUV commercial parody, sent to me by an acquaintance (quickly, before GM pulls the link).
General Motors has a new online marketing campaign for the Chevy Apprentice, where you can design your own TV commercial and play it back using Flash. You can also enter your commercial into a contest. Inevitably — especially with the SUV’s reputation (deserved or undeserved) as a poster child for environmental destruction and a high roll-over fatality rate — such a contest can attract, say, less-than serious entries.
The parody linked above is side-splittingly funny, but I’m posting about it here because the Flash always begins with the message “Loading XML…” That led me to a few observations:
- GM is using XML to save the scripts for the customized commercials (does any Flash-type know how to get at the raw XML? I’d love to see the markup.)
- GM is advertising the fact that they’re using XML to save the commercials (or else Flash is forcing them to, but I don’t remember seeing that message with other Flash animations).
- Perhaps XML is so cool that people want to point out that they’re using it.
- Or, perhaps GM wants to make sure that XML gets the blame if the commercial loads slowly.
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