State Farm Car Insurance

1 star rating

April 7, 2008

Adam W. 127 reviews Send Message | Add to Friends

Video Demonizing Biking

You will probably notice that the link I provided in this review is not to the State Farm Website, but to a youtube video. This video is of a State Farm commercial. Please go watch it before reading the rest of this review. I'll wait.

Finished yet? Are you as dumbfounded as I am? I will admit I am not as outraged as some others have been (you probably also noticed that youtube disabled comments for this video, and considering the rancor often posted below youtube videos that is really saying something), but I still can't believe that State Farm would do this. As a marketer myself, I understand their intentions of the advertisement, and i would even argue that they probably did not intend it to be anit-bike in any way. rather, it seems to me that the people making the ad are so clueless as to benefits of biking to work, and still so bought into the culture of owning and driving cars in America that it never even occurred to them that people would be up-in-arms about this.

What is most amazing to me is that this same video with different words would be an incredibly pro-bike statement. They have an attractive, fit guy riding his bike to work (it's true, riding to work is actually good for you, in addition to being good for the earth). All you would need to make this video positive would be to then have a fat guy get out of his car while munching on a cheeseburger, and then have Susan comment, not on our heroes shorts, but on his sexy legs.

Boo State Farm!

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