Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Ad Nauseam

Chrysler: Let’s Ruin America!

By Aaron Naparstek | May 20, 2008 | 40 Comments

Looks like Chrysler has figured out a novel way to move their 2008 model gas guzzlers off the lot. Sign up for their new "Let’s Refuel America!" credit card and they’ll lock in the price of gas at $2.99/gallon for three years. That’s right, it’s a 36-month guarantee that you don’t have to think about […]

State Farm Looks to Engage Cycling Community

By Brad Aaron | Apr 4, 2008 | 34 Comments

Responding to criticism of an ad depicting a humiliated office worker forced to bike to his job due to high gas prices, State Farm Director of Marketing Communications Tim Van Hoof writes: I’m sorry this commercial offended anyone. State Farm has been a supporter of bicycle safety through the thousands of bicycle rodeos we’ve held […]

New York: A “Drivers’ Paradise”

By Brad Aaron | Sep 19, 2007 | 35 Comments

Move over, biker babes. A presumably tongue-in-cheek article in the Observer heralds the "Californication of New York," thanks to the proliferation of automobiles in "young, lifestyle neighborhoods" like Williamsburg, Astoria and Inwood. According to the piece, a growing number of suburban transplants see auto reliance as a comforting reminder of home. "I didn’t realize how […]

Ad Nauseam: Tiki Barber and His Cadillac Escalade

By Sarah Goodyear | Mar 28, 2007 | 4 Comments

While reading the NY Times essay about the woman who drives back and forth across the Brooklyn Bridge the other day, I was reminded of the Tiki Barber ads for the Cadillac Escalade. The spot that premiered during the Super Bowl is a moody, impressionistic montage that shows the former New York Giants running back […]

Going Nowhere Fast

By Sarah Goodyear | Mar 26, 2007 | 22 Comments

This weekend’s City section of the New York Times featured a mind-blowing essay by children’s-book writer Sarah Shey about her habit of taking her one-year-old son out for drives in the city — drives with no destination or purpose in mind, in which she crossed and recrossed the Brooklyn Bridge endless times. Shey, who is […]

European Automakers Are Feeling the Heat

By Jason Varone | Feb 26, 2007 | 1 Comment

While the never-ending barrage of automobile advertising is as shameless as ever here in the States, European automakers are beginning to recognize that their product is perceived as harmful and destructive, not unlike cigarettes or trans-fats. The Wall Street Journal reports: Amid growing alarm over climate change and a trend in Europe toward faster, heavier […]