Chevron, http://www.chevroncars.com/ Intelligence: As popular icons on television in the late 1990s, the talking, digital-claymation cars of the Chevron gasoline company provide for very entertaining advertisements. With each car featuring a unique personality and wonderful expressiveness, the cars tell us about what it's like to be... cars. Online, however, the cars are no place to be found on the corporate site, www.chevron.com. A sleek and intelligently conservative style features not one car. Instead, visitors can choose to be funneled to an entirely distinct site devoted to only the talking cars. To what end remains to be determined... The same cars that sell the company on television are targeted for only children online. As an adult, I have a difficult time understanding the purpose of the cars, and why they should, after all, be the experts on what it's like to be a car. To a child, however, I can imagine they'd be quite convincing. The textual descriptions of each car are, to Chevron's credit, enjoyable and clever. In the end, it seems like this site is an online day care center for the kids to click around at while the parents visit the corporate site. Character: The most curious aspect of the site for children might be "Wally the Warning Squirrel." This squirrel maintains a dialog with parents about the fact that commercial material is advertised on subsequent pages of the site when a visitor clicks on several portions of the site. Confusing for possibly two reasons, the site takes on the flashy, cute, and innocent appearance of a children's area while pushing commercial products, and the warnings from the squirrel probably make no sense to a child visiting the site. In fact, they made no sense to me, at the start. Upon further investigation, it appears as though Chevron is covering their legal rear by placing such warnings all over the site. How can we trust a site, though, that uses one animated character to warn us about the activities of the other animated characters on the site? It takes a lot of reading of the privacy statement and other pages to understand the site's purpose, and that is reading that kids will most certainly shun. Nevertheless, once past such questions, the cars themselves remain very likable. Goodwill: What the Chevron cars lose in character is compensated by their apparent goodwill towards the audience of the site once that audience works its way past the legal warnings. Visitors can choose between the dozens of cars and use that car as a guide to the suburban setting of the site. Each car can be seen moving in video action, or simply heard in audio. Empathy and understanding are a low priority, but if you think of it in the perspective of a child playing with a toy, it's not expected that they respond to the child's feelings. The cars mean well, unless, perhaps, you have a credit card. The overall ethos of the Chevron Cars is inflated only because of its extremely creative likability and responsiveness factors. Questions about the overarching competence, intent, and morality surrounding them raise some concerns. Many of the best aspects of the cars might not even be accessible to web surfers whose computers cannot download their interactive features. Back to the Report Overview Site created 11/27/99, last updated 5/14/00. All textual content published under the supervision of the Department of Speech Communication at The University of Washington, Seattle, and hosted by Filmtracks Publications of Missoula, Montana. All artwork is protected by the Copyright © 2000, of the site(s) it represents. Its appearance on this report is for informational, non-profit use, and may not be redistributed without their expressed written consent. Direct all questions or comments about these pages to Christian Clemmensen.