Beyond safety ratings, how unfathomably giant the touchscreen is, or perceived overall reliability, car shoppers often ponder if a vehicle they’re interested in will fit their lifestyle.

The term “lifestyle” is broad of course. A “lifestyle” for some means dashing through downtown on weekend nights, trying out all the savory foods promised by the priciest Michelin star-awarded restaurants. For others, “lifestyle” means punching the clock 40 hours a week (at a minimum) at a demanding job and signing up for carpool duty in the morning. Then there’s the batch of car buyers that take to the outdoors, engaging in various forms of outdoor recreation. Members of this target audience have, what ambitious marketing gurus in pressed suits call, “active lifestyles.” Questions like “Does this car come standard with cross-bars for a cargo box?” and “Will I have ample ground clearance to reach that trailhead in this deserty national park?” become more important. I shamelessly align with this audience of granola-eating, tree, hugging, and flannel-wearing consumers. That’s why I’ve bought two all-wheel-drive Saab station wagons over the past seven years. But to catch the eyes of and sell to your “active lifestyle” target audience, the ad needs to accurately capture that lifestyle.

When print was king

I absolutely enjoy finding vintage advertising, and the gold mine that is the world wide web makes this easier to spend hours doing so. Ever since I’ve been a car geek, I’ve adored the rich copy and accompanying art found in magazine and newspaper automotive ads from decades past. Plus as a skier, I have a deeper lust for any classic car ad that features some iteration of skiing. Combine a wintery setting, maybe a few posh lines of text, any form of skiing, and a commanding car- the entire thing is almost romantic.  It’s the kind of stuff I want to hang up on the walls of my apartment. Imagine a late-70s Porsche 912 with a metal rack strapped to its roof, carrying a pair of wooden skis away from a chalet high in the Alps under bluebird skies. Mmhmm, dreamy, right?

The trail of classic car ads with skiing goes back decades. One of my earlier favorites is this print ad for the 1956 Pontiac Star Chief. The initial copy is crooked by today’s terms, “Sure as you love action- this car speaks your language,” but a fierce skier sporting a confident grin helped to highlight the Star Chief’s 227 HP Strato-Streak V8, paired to an “oil smooth” Strato-Flight Hydra-Matic. If only modern transmissions sounded this suave. At the top of the ad sits a two-tone, chrome-laden Star Chief dashing away in the snow from an alpine resort. I love other blips of this copy too, like “A car so charged with Verve and drive and ‘go’ there’s nothing in your experience so joyously alive.” It almost reads like a Henry David Thoreau piece.

Oldsmobile got on the chairlift too in 1964, using a charming fictional slope-side scene to showcase its all-new Jetstar 88. Above the red muscle car was a gorgeous illustration of skiers gathering at a cozy A-frame lodge, surrounded by aspen and the distant snowcapped view of a chairlift ascending between a gap in the pines. Olds took it a step further into the real world and pasted pictures of a skier flying off a jump, slaloming with tight parallel skis, and a duo figure skating. The copy for this ad again followed a similar early adaptation of targeting those with “active lifestyles,” using colorful language in a bid to sell the modest and muscular Jetstar 88’s 245 HP Jetfire Rocket V8 like “That, sir, is action!” Even one of Oldsmobile’s taglines for that model year read “Where the action is!” in all caps.

One of the longest players in the game has been Subaru, who continues to be a heroic sponsor of the National Ski Patrol year after year. For close to 26 years now, Subaru and ski patrollers across the country have teamed together to promote safety on the slopes, and on the road. Chances are if you’re a skier or a snowboarder, you’ve probably seen a National Ski Patrol- branded Outback or Ascent. In addition to loaning vehicles to a select group of ski patrol ambassadors, Subaru also provides scholarships for ski patrollers with avalanche dogs to attend the Wasatch Backcountry Rescue International Dog School for comprehensive training.

Beyond the red coats, Subaru has also established a partnership with the United States Ski Team, as the team’s official car. Marketing efforts especially during the late 1970s and into the 1980s were fantastically rad, with patriotic television and print content showing members of the ski team in uniform next to decal-clad wagons. Subaru strived to pitch its four-wheel-drive capability by way of the U.S. Ski Team with catchy taglines like “We challenge any ski team in the world to an uphill,” or  “The U.S. Ski Team uses over 200 pieces of equipment to go down the mountain, but only one way up.”

Let’s also look at Audi. Back in 1986, Audi hired BBDO to promote its capable all-wheel-drive system in an engaging commercial. The agency hired professional driver Harald Demuth to scale Finland’s 37.5-degree (80% grade) Pitkävuori ski jump in a 100 CS quattro. As expected, Demuth shifted the frosty red Audi into first and to the sound of synthesized celebratory trumpets, accelerated up the steep 255-ft long ramp without hesitation. Audi returned to Pitkävuori two decades later to carefully repeat the stunt with a 2005 A6 and Uwe Bleck. “Vorsprung durch technik.”

Today’s approach

Many of these marketing efforts have paid off and worked well, especially for Jeep and Subaru. The Wrangler is the household go-to vehicle for anything and everything off-roading and Jeep can sell just about anything as long as it has a “4X4” badge on it. Subaru’s captured the hearts of nature geeks and outdoor recreators, as you’re bound to find a parking lot full of Imprezas, Outbacks, and Foresters flooding the parking lots of state parks, climbing gyms, and natural food stores.

Recently, there’s been a surge in automakers using print, television, social, and in-person, to pitch their vehicles to the “active lifestyle” crowd. Honda’s spent loads of cash buying out the inside covers of Backpacker Magazine to introduce its all-new Passport while newcomer Rivian debuted an outfitted example of its soon-coming electric R1T at last year’s Overland West Expo. Toyota now offers a cool Adventure Grade trim for its popular RAV4, a desert-ready Gladiator Mojave is on the way, Hummer is making a comeback tour, and Kia’s moody TV spot where the Telluride locks its center diff to get sideways in the mud is simply glorious. Even the boutique manufacturers are turning to this. Engineers in Crewe entered a specially specced Continental GT into Austria’s 2020 GP Ice Race, a first for Bentley, with LED spotlights, aerodynamic cross-bars guarding a set of fat twin-tip skis, and an exposed red tow hook. Striking, nonetheless.

Automakers are taking note that people rely on their vehicles as a gateway to get them into the outdoors so they can partake in the hobbies they love. We should definitely be excited about that.