Ram’s advertising history includes some genuinely memorable work — the ‘Farmer’ commercial with Paul Harvey’s voice remains one of the most powerful automotive ads ever made, connecting the Ram brand to working-class values, agricultural heritage, and the dignity of physical labor in a way that felt completely authentic.
The new Ram electric truck commercial is a different kind of thing. Where ‘Farmer’ treated its audience as the actual people who needed trucks for actual work, the electric truck campaign leans into the aspirational and futuristic in ways that feel disconnected from the core Ram buyer. The criticism isn’t that the REV electric truck is a bad product — it may be a genuinely capable vehicle when it arrives. The criticism is that the advertising doesn’t seem to understand who currently buys Ram trucks and what they need from them.
The tension is real across the whole EV truck category. Companies that have spent decades building their brands on towing capacity, payload capability, reliability in demanding conditions, and the identity of the people who use trucks for actual work are now trying to sell electric versions of those trucks to the same buyers. The authenticity gap — between what the advertising promises and what the actual truck experience delivers — is wider for work-duty truck buyers than for any other EV market segment.
The farmers and contractors and tradespeople who made the original Ram brand what it is will buy electric trucks when electric trucks work better than diesel for what they actually do. Range under heavy load, charging availability in rural areas, cold-weather performance — these are the questions they’re asking. A commercial that talks past those concerns in favor of generic futurism is going to earn exactly the cynical reception it’s getting from the audience that matters most.
I will say, I’ve driven two Ram trucks in the past week, and it does seem like ED commercials are pre-programmed into the radios