A year into the phenomenon of Taxi TV — the channels that now play in the back of New York City cabs — and one of the major advertisers deserves more scrutiny.
The advertiser is Russia Today, a pro-Kremlin site and YouTube channel that is part of a 24-hour English-language news channel in Russia. As Alessandra Stanley observed a year ago in the Times, Russia Today has broadcast its brand of “enigmatic ad” expressing (at least) a “Putinesque disdain for Western efficiency” since Taxi TV first started entertaining and bugging the hell out of people in New York taxis last summer.
Robert Mackey has written bitingly about Russia Today on the Lede blog.
The newest enigmatic Russia TV ad, which is in heavy rotation in many NYC cabs, is graphically fascinating—and completely disconcerting. I can’t get that mistaken-pill thing—the trucker with the blister pack—out of my head.
And while you’re trying to sort out the squeamish-making ideology here, note that Russia Today is the same outfit that makes Stalin-was-a-poet ads.
Stalin-was-a-poet ads? Yeah. Take a look.