Taking a page from the Warner Brothers playbook, Ram recently announced plans to offer a more expansive slate of Ram lease programs for those eager to get behind the wheel of a new vehicle. Executives say the revamp was inspired by the recent success of the four-plus hour Snyder Cut of the Justice League, which was released in March after years of clamoring from fans.
“I think the lesson we learned from the Snyder Cut is that people just want more of everything,” says Tim Vasquez, VP of Customer Financing at Ram. “If people are willing to sit through nearly an hour of Cyborg backstory, it really disproves the old myth of quality over quantity.”
Ram fans have long demanded that the company revisit its leasing approach, but the pleas largely fell on deaf ears until a massive social media campaign put pressure on the truck manufacturer. The #ReleaseTheRamLease hashtag started trending globally late last year, spurring untold tweets, YouTube screeds, and even a viral TikTok challenge in which participants made two little horns with their pinky fingers and rammed headfirst into a wall.
“We’ve always valued customer input, and we’ll do anything it takes to deliver the type of generous leasing terms customers have come to expect from Ram Trucks, especially if it means we can get off the hook for all these hospital bills,” says Vasquez. The newly announced lease terms have already made waves in the Ram community, with excitement not tempered by the fact that many aspects of the program make little sense. The lease’s existing zero percent financing terms, for example, have been doubled in the new lease.
With this new approach at the forefront, the retooled lease offerings from Ram seem almost too good to be true. “We’ve instructed our dealerships to up the ante at any given opportunity,” says Vasquez. “They ask for $2,750 cashback? We’ll put them in our Cash Cube and let them grab as much money as they can in 60 seconds. They want an extra touch screen? Hell, I’ll run home and rip my daughter’s smartphone right out of her hands, glue it to the dash, and boom, extra touch screen! Sure it’s not integrated into any of the other existing systems in the truck, but around here, the policy is now focused on quantity, not logic,” he says.
Taking Cues From the Snyder Cut
The extended runtime wasn’t the only element of the Snyder Cut that made an impression at Ram. The director’s gritty, dark approach to the DC Extended Universe has been a welcome alternative to Marvel’s lighter, more quippy fare; one Vasquez hopes can be replicated in future lease offerings. “Our R&D teams are currently developing a new type of windshield that will give everything on the horizon the dark, moody tones that fans have come to associate with Snyder,” says Dave Prince, Technical Team Director at Ram. “We’ve also been in contact with Ben Affleck about doing an entirely growl-based GPS narration.”
Additional Features Include:
- AI-equipped mirrors that can be set to remove / restore facial hair, or rebuild your face completely based on driver preference.
- Advanced “Segment GPS” technology that divides long routes into smaller, more digestible increments.
- Slow-Motion Monitoring, allowing the driver to pay closer attention to their surroundings.
- QR Code for free download of an 18-hour loop of “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen -or- Amazon-inspired throat singing and
- Ben Affleck
In some respects, Ram might be sticking a little too close to the Snyder Cut model. While the retooled Ram lease is sure to generate a lot of excitement, the company has decided to offer it exclusively through a partnership with the Hallmark Channel.
Customers interested in signing a new lease will first have to subscribe to Hallmark’s streaming service for $14.99 a month and agree to write, produce and direct one of the 13,425 Christmas movies aired on the channel each year. Here again, quality isn’t as much of a concern as simply getting something usable on film.
“This is really an intriguing new model that benefits both the consumer and us,” says Nick Klaus, Director of Adver-tainment at Hallmark. “Ram drivers get an unprecedentedly generous lease offer, and we get a little help figuring out how to tell the same ‘small-town woman meets big city man and shows him the errors of his cosmopolitan lifestyle by winning a Christmas cookie bake-off or something,’” says Klaus.
With generous terms and a questionably sustainable financing structure, the long-awaited revamped Ram lease is sure to turn heads when it goes live later this year. Leave it to a brand long associated with innovation and risk-taking to finally step up and take on the old “less is more” adage, which, frankly, has never really made sense on even the most basic level. More is, as has been proven time and again by very basic mathematical principles, more.
