Makers of Trucks and SUVs Unveil Bold New ‘F*** Vulnerable Road Users’ Ad Campaign
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A group representing makers of pickup trucks and SUVs today rolled out a provocative ad campaign declaring their contempt for pedestrians and bicyclists, delivering a blunt and profane message to such vulnerable road users: “Fuck you.”
The sentiment appears to reflect not just their vehicles’ increasingly aggressive design, but also that design’s inherent risk to anyone on foot or bike, including children—a risk that’s getting harder to deny. As one journalist put it on Bloomberg.com:
Large pickups and SUVs are notably more lethal to other road users, and their conquest of U.S. roads has been accompanied by a spike in fatalities among pedestrians and bicyclists.
Public safety officials, cycling advocates, and running groups, predictably, were swift to condemn the campaign, launched by the National Association of Truck and SUV Manufacturers. Marketing and advertising experts, however, were intrigued.
“It’s a curious strategy,” said Emory Leeson, a vice president at Dudley & Moore, an ad agency in New York, noting that makers of dangerous products normally dance around that danger, aiming to make themselves feel OK marketing such goods and to make consumers feel OK buying them.
“This sort of radical truth telling is highly unusual,” he said. “It will be interesting to see if it pays off.”
Reached for comment, a spokesperson for the National Association of Truck and SUV Manufacturers told Dumb Runner, “Go fuck yourself.”
