Subtle

Yard sign in the hood, featuring the burning Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, the obvious assumption being that only McCain (and PALIN!) can prevent this from happening again. Keep America Safe. And by the way, John McCain can't comb his own hair. So vote for him.


I cannot imagine what the 2012 election is going to be like. This has gotten so out of hand that I am very seriously ready to emigrate to Australia.

In case you're interested, here's where the sign points you to.

Crossposted to Radio Free Babylon.

Long-Legged Lady in Glittery Gold Get-up Corrals Cow Couch

A Florida furniture store I have never been to nor shopped at is featuring this ad in print and outdoor this month. And on their website is this interesting image, not that they're trying to point you toward the woman's crotch or anything. Just a nice table.

Previously:
Furniture Ad Stimulates Lingerie Sales

Creative Director to Designer: "Remove Nipples"

A banner hanging on the side of the main bus terminal in downtown Orlando promotes Sunday night's Wrestlemania event at the Citrus Bowl. If you look closely, (click for enlarged view) you'll notice that the wrestlers have no nipples, in a misinterpretation of a local ordinance prohibiting the public display of nipples.

More on the sordid details of nippleless wrestlers here.

Don't ask me how, but the Citrus Bowl (capacity of 70K) is nearly sold out for this event.

Furniture Ad Stimulates Lingerie Sales

ScanDesign, a trendy furniture company with stores throughout Florida, does some passable advertising. But I'm a little perplexed by what appears to be a very unoriginal idea in this current campaign, seen here as it appears on their website, and catching my eye this morning in the form of an outdoor digital board on Interstate 4.

Hmmm. Lingerie-clad angels. Why does that seem familiar? And just in time for Valentine's Day.

Yes, I know "there is nothing new under the sun," and there are very few "original" ideas left in this world oversaturated with advertising, but come on - this one seems blatant.

No Free Ride for Car Dealers

They’ve likely ripped you off by a few thousand dollars, and yet you allow them to stick some ugly nameplate on your car as you drive off the lot. At the very least, they try to mount a tacky black plastic license plate frame to the rear end, complete with the dealer's URL and phone numbers. Or vinyl lettering. Whatever. And off you go, advertising this dealer for free everywhere you drive.

Unless you work there, or have a friend or relative who works there, or in the unlikely case that you really did enjoy your purchase experience so much that you want everyone to know about your friends the car dealers, why are you offering your vehicle up as this dealer's rolling outdoor signage?

Insist that if your vehicle is to carry one of these, you expect to be compensated. Otherwise, make them take it off.

The World's Worst Wordplay

I can appreciate a good pun, a spontaneous "that's what she said," joke and other juvenile plays on words. But this one is so senseless and bad, I had to pull over for a picture.

The Branson Billboard Brouhaha

Or: Why I Don't Do Ad Clubs Anymore

I was once kicked off my local Ad Club board. We were affiliated with the AAF and did all the usual Ad Club stuff that the rest of them do; monthly luncheons with speakers, Addy Awards, and other self-congratulatory ego orgies. I was living in Springfield, Missouri at the time. To you big city dwellers, I know that’s a laughable place - flyover country - but believe it or not, Springfieldians are very proud of their area and actually look down on LA and NY.

Forty-five miles south of Springfield is Branson, Missouri, the hillbilly tourist town filled with unknown country artists, go-carts, miniature golf courses, real golf courses, funnel cakes and vacation timeshares. Branson had experienced an explosion of growth in the 90s that turned it into an out-of-control Mecca for blue hairs on tour buses and other aficionados of American tastelessness. Everyone was capitalizing on the sudden success, cracked wide-open by a feature on 60 Minutes. Springfield renamed their airport Springfield-Branson. One tiny town that neighbored Branson, called Lakeview, decided they’d be better known as Branson West. Highway 65, a well trafficked Missouri corridor and the main entrance to Branson, was sprouting new billboards every week, each new one more hideous than the last, with loud colors and hideous close-ups of washed-up has-beens and never-weres like Andy Williams, Tony Orlando, Yakov Smirnoff or John Davidson, staring down at you with gleaming, capped and bleached smiles.

And then along came a state proposition that recommended the eventual halt of new billboard construction. I liked the idea.

The Ozarks are really quite pretty, and that stretch of Highway 65 between Springfield and the Arkansas border was becoming (to me, anyway) an eyesore of crass commercialism. I'm no tree-hugger, but it was really out of control, enough so that I decided to flip off all my commercially minded colleagues and support the proposition publicly. Tipping the scales for me was the club telling me that our official position as an AAF affiliate was total opposition to the proposition. Tell me how to think or how to vote? Damn, you've just stepped all over the liberty we cherish in this country and awakened the revolutionary in me. So I wrote a piece for the newspaper that ran with my picture and the caption, “Jetpacks is a VP of the Springfield Ad Club.” It basically said, "We've got enough f-ing billboards now. Support Prop A." It ran in the local paper as well as in the Kansas City Star. It took the Kansas City AAF brass about ten minutes to call down to the local chapter and inform them that I was unfit to continue in my capacity on the Ad Club board, having just embarrassed them by using an AAF Club in my byline and mentioning that august organization in my article. I was now a traitor to the trade. But by that point, I was glad to be gone. Ad Club functions are generally just incestuous business card exchanges where the old divorced AE guys hit on the hot young AE girls. Oh, sure, they do some good with their annual contribution to the Ronald McDonald House or whatever, but by and large, it’s just a circle jerk and a chance to snipe about the local hot shop that always cleans up at the awards. Or if you’re lucky, a chance to land a job at that hot shop.

So, anyway, the proposition went on to be narrowly defeated. I’m sure if you drive that stretch of Ozarks highway today you’ll face a stacked and blazing gauntlet of cheap, ugly and loud billboards all shouting at you from the hills. There’s money to be made all around.

I’m never going to convince people like those on that ad club board that advertising can be more than loud calls to action and assaults on intelligence. It’s more than just dollars. It’s more than just buying more airtime than your competitor and bludgeoning the audience with increased frequency. But eventually - maybe even hopefully - over-saturation turns into backlash. Sometimes, one more billboard is one too many.

No One Is Writing Down Your Number

Can we maybe have some guidelines for billboards? Like phone numbers. How often do people write down the numbers they see on billboards? My guess is not very often, even if that number is easy to remember, like this one for what appears to be a crisis pregnancy center hotline. We're trying to drive. Ditch the phone numbers. Websites are far easier to remember. And while you’re squeezing your web address on that billboard, I can save you some space: drop the "www." We all figured out about 10 years ago that if you have .com, .org, .biz or dot anything at the end, that means we can find it online.

I'm no art director, but I think I just made this billboard better.

Did You Vote for Him?

You may remember Bill Engvall as the 4th funniest comedian on the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. TBS' promotions department has dubbed him "America's Favorite Comedian." And Engvall himself sports this banner on his official website, so he's obviously on board with the messaging.












I saw an outdoor board for this show with the same message this afternoon in Winter Park, Florida. The TBS promotions department needs to peddle their shows, of course, but this is quite a stretch.

Chris Rock? Good shot at the title. Bill Engvall? Maybe I'm just out of step with America. Again.

New and Improved - But Not Really

I guess the neighbors complained about the horrendous signage that went up locally. (Previously reported.)

So the Certified Association Management Company decided to "go green" and eco-friendly, changing the red on the sign to a more environmentally conscious blue-green.

Now, if we could get rid of Divorced White Mom, Soulpatch Hipster Guy, Young Hispanic Lady and Faded Black Man in this imaginary quartet of stock photography office staff, we'd be getting somewhere.

They are still, as noted by HighJive on the previous post, Certified Asses.

Stock Photography - Stock Name

This new blight on the landscape is not far from the casa. The Certified Association Management Company (can a name be any more generic?) has erected a sign in front of their office (Suite 100, naturally) picturing your basic urban hipster imaginary office quartet comprised of dyed-red White female leader (she's freshly divorced, I'd bet), young soul-patch sporting dude who does double-duty representing the Hispanic or Arab demo, (ask any Mexican man how he was treated immediately after 9-11. It happens.) young Latina woman and of course, always relegated to the back, sans tie and fading away, Black man, because he likely works in the mailroom. (ask HighJive.)

At least they didn't go with "Black man and White man in matching dark business suits shake hands in glass and chrome setting."

I hate "business" stock photography, and now I hate it even more as I have to look at this atrocity on my way to 7-11 every morning. On your website, billboards or collateral materials? Excusable. But on your actual signage? On a street? Unpardonable, indefensible and punishable by public flogging.

Bargain Barn

In a gesture of goodwill toward that horrible beer, Guinness, which I can't stand and derided earlier for their attemtps to turn St. Patrick's Day into St. Patrick's Season, I have tastefully distorted and overlayed the Guinness logo on the roof of the barn in the banner of this blog in honor of St. Patrick's day. (The barn is in Sperryville, VA.) I suspect this gesture will result in untold thousands of cases of Guinness being sold between now and Saturday. Drink up, America. St. Patrick would've wanted it that way.

Barn advertising was a common practice in America for many years, but was deemed an eyesore apparently in the 1960s. (According to a book on the subject.) I've decided to bring barn advertising back, at least to this blog. I won't do the Google Adsense thing. I just don't like that sort of page clutter. You come here for the text in the middle of the page, not the distractions on the periphery. (Except for the "Linkers and Lurkers" section, because they are all worthwhile bloggers.)

If you want your company's logo seen by over 1 million unique visitors per day* then you should contact me and we'll discuss how you can advertise on the barn in the banner of this blog.

*Total lie. But we can talk frivolous and immaterial things like numbers if you are serious about maximizing eyeballs for enhanced ROI built on a unique and robust synergistic platform with total scalability and entry-level portability.

Signage Seen in the Neighborhood

Or...God, I Need a Pool

A house down the street from mine just recently underwent some additions, including a new roof, a new pool and a screened pool enclosure. Last Sunday, I watched as the man of the house drove stakes into the front lawn, a large piece of plywood at his feet. I assumed it was for a garage sale or something. Then this sign appeared.
















Buyer’s guilt? Not sure, but the Bible verse he cites on the sign reads: And my God shall supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

A roof is a need, for sure, and it could be argued (somewhat weakly) that one needs a pool here in Florida. But the screened pool enclosure? Seems more like a convenience. I think Paul might’ve meant food, clothing, shelter and the like when he wrote that to the Philippians.

I’m going to have grab the video camera and interview this guy and put it up on YouTube. When you’re putting up an advertising sign like this, I think you expect to be questioned about it.

Cruel Church Advertising

The church marquee. Drive-by religion. A unique and truly American mixture of faith and advertising. (Tell me if I'm wrong, Brits, Aussies, Germans and Dutch. Yeah, I look at the stats of this blog.)

I once thought I'd compile a book of the stupid and/or clever ones I've seen, but most are just truly.....stupid. Clichés and puns are the norm for this outdoor expression.

Make your own at Church Sign Generator.