Ad Nauseam: Toyota’s (Passive-Aggressive) Ransom Note to America

11:00 AM PDT on October 14, 2009

Toyota wants you to know that it's here for you. And not just as a car maker, as the company explains in this spot, ironically entitled "Community."

Like GM before them, Toyota wants to make sure you realize just how much their company means to you. Here's our voice-over:

"We acknowledge you are coming to despise automobiles, but your nation depends on our industry for so many jobs that, even if we only manufactured cardboard cut-out cars that you had to carry down your few remaining walkable Main Streets, you'd still need us, America."

Accompanying the ad is the aggressively cloying and patently manipulative "Beyond Cars" web site --
which if nothing else should serve as an irresistible culture-jamming target. What do we see, Toyota? For starters, we see a world where your product doesn't kill people.

And you? What do you see?

Bryan Goebel @

Bryan Goebel is a reporter at KQED Public Radio in San Francisco. A veteran journalist and writer, he helped launch Streetsblog SF in 2009 and served as editor for three years. He lives car-free in the Castro District.

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