Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Compromise Ad (Nauseam)

One of the top-rated commercials from last weekend's Super Bowl was the Audi Doberhuahua ad.  The spot begins with a couple that is having trouble selecting a dog from the selection at their neighborhood pet store.  A salesperson suggested they breed two dogs together, thus creating the Doberhuahua.  The commercial then goes on to show the abnormally large-headed-and-small-bodied dog prancing at dog shows, running down the street chasing the local children, and barking at passerby while sitting in its owner's purse.  The ad ends with the on-screen line, "Compromise scares us too."

The reactions were immediate: Audi is showing us the "dangers of compromise."  It was echoed all around the blogosphere.

What everyone takes for granted is that compromise is inherently bad.  Audi, cowed as they are into purity by the menacing bark of compromise, surely themselves must compromise.  They must compromise on safety, or else their new A3 would look like a tank.  They must compromise on speed, or else the engine would comprise 95% of the car.  They must compromise on aesthetics, or else the car would be made from fine designer leather inlaid with diamonds.  They must compromise on profit, or else the car would cost millions.  And so on and so forth.

Compromise is essential to good design.  As yours truly wrote a couple months ago, complete inclusion without constraints only guarantees poor design.  If everything is attempted, nothing is done well.  While my previous post was about computer makers, the same is true with auto companies.  The former might create an operating system so feature-packed that it is unwieldy, while the latter might create a car that is too expensive, too heavy, or too powerful.

"Compromise scares us too" makes a good ad line or Twitter hashtag, but fails as a design philosophy.  Lets hope that Audi is less scared of their Doberhuahua than they claim.

I'll leave you with this tweet:
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1 comment:

  1. Daniel AhnFebruary 9, 2014 at 10:10 PM

    In this awesome post, you raise the importance (and to some extent, the requirement) of compromise especially in technology. I believe that one pertinent example of this is the Model UN conference that we just partook in this past weekend. I think that we all had unique ideas in our individual working papers or directives, but any lack of compromise destroyed the chance of any paper being passed. That being said, progress in anything from diplomacy to technology can be deemed to be imperfect, but I guess that's the only thing that we can afford to do.

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