Holiday Car Ads in the Era of Millennials Buying Fewer Cars

It’s that time again – the season for fairy-tale car ads in which American families with glossy hair and dazzling teeth present each other with fancy automobiles as Christmas gifts. These impossibly prosperous and good-looking folks coo with delight at the luxury vehicles that show up in their driveways on Christmas morn, topped with enormous red ribbons and the faintest dusting of crystalline snow. You know the routine.

Lexus has long been a leader in this type of holiday-auto-fantasy-peddling, its jingle one of the season's most numbing refrains. This year, though, there is a hint of anxiety in the company’s ad campaign, a seeming reflection of the auto industry's new reality: that Millennials are not driving, and by extension not purchasing or even expecting as gifts, new cars anywhere near as much as their parents did.