Futurama (Highways and Horizons)
General Motors1939
Futurama (Highways and Horizons) is a 1939 world's fair exhibit and ride for General Motors.
The line
I Have Seen the Future
Why it works
The most popular exhibit at the 1939–40 New York World's Fair was, in effect, an advertisement for the motor car. Inside General Motors' Highways and Horizons pavilion, the designer Norman Bel Geddes seated visitors in moving, sound-equipped chairs and carried them over a 35,000-square-foot model of America in 1960: highways cutting through cities, mountains and valleys, and suburbs spreading outwards. Bel Geddes later wrote that five million people saw it and that queues often stretched more than a mile. Riders were handed a pin reading "I Have Seen the Future". Rather than selling any particular car, the ride sold a future built around driving. It is studied as a founding piece of brand experience, which the Smithsonian calls a precursor of the theme-park dark ride, and for an influence well beyond marketing: President Roosevelt sought Bel Geddes's advice on transport, and his model anticipated the interstate highways of the 1950s.
Techniques
- Participation Seats visitors in moving chairs and carries them over a vast model of 1960 America, so the audience experiences the pitch rather than watching it.
- Glittering generalities Sells no particular car, only a shining vision of the future, summed up by a pin telling riders they have seen it.
Sources · 3
Updated
