The Brilliance to Which We Aspire
Tuesday, June 29, 2004 – Thumbing through the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine last week, an ad for eBay Motors -- smack, dab in between the “Correspondence” and “Rock & Roll” sections -- stopped me dead in my tracks. An extraordinarily simple, no-frills composition, it uses a story about “Brothers John and Tom [who] want a great way to sell their cars” to illustrate the benefits of peddling wheels on eBay versus the old standby, the classifieds. After seven days, John, who uses eBay, “sells his car for a great price,” while Tom, who went the old-school route, finds his “ad is used as litter box lining.” It’s hip, funny and irreverent, sure, but it’s also textbook in formula, drawing on a case study of two young men and…