Comment by kstrauser
9 days ago
Not exactly the same thing, but I was flying from SFO to the east coast and this stood out to me:
At SFO: "Welcome to San Francisco! Please feel free to relax in our yoga and meditation rooms."
At DTW: "Welcome to Detroit. Remember to cover your face when you sneeze."
Totally different vibes.
I always like the differences in the ads.
SFO: "Use our AI startup!"
DCA: "Buy our warship!"
"In New York, all the advertising on the streets and on the subway assumes that you, the person reading, are an ambiently depressed twenty-eight-year-old office worker whose main interests are listening to podcasts, ordering delivery, and voting for the Democrats. I thought I found that annoying, but in San Francisco they don’t bother advertising normal things at all. The city is temperate and brightly colored, with plenty of pleasant trees, but on every corner it speaks to you in an aggressively alien nonsense. Here the world automatically assumes that instead of wanting food or drinks or a new phone or car, what you want is some kind of arcane B2B service for your startup" - Sam Kriss
I haven’t lived in NYC for more than 20 years, but I still associate it with Dr Zizmor, a dermatologist. His ads were all over the subway.
He retired not too long ago. I know because it was notable enough to deserve a feature in the NY Times.
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Late night TV in LA: "It's Cal Worthington and his dog Spot!" He'd buy up every commercial slot and just run the same ad over and over. He's long gone but his ads live on in my head.
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Unfortunately, the B2B SaaS ads have started infecting the subway as well.
Ha. Last time I went through DCA the ads were all "Here's why TikTok isn't evil!"
But usually they are "here's why Palantir isn't evil". Actually, they are "Palantir is evil and that's awesome!"
Go to Louisville -- it's all BOURBON.
Also DTW having everything in Japanese, I'm guessing cause of the auto industry
Detroit sounds really cool. If I were a young person, I would look for a cheap, once-great, up-and-coming city where I could make my mark, with lots of other young people doing the same thing. The other one is Richmond, VA. There is a secret underground of young, smart, kind people moving there.