Are billboards meant to be read on the first drive-by? It seems that would be the goal, but many are so hard to follow, it takes a few viewings. I know that many viewers will drive by an ad at least once a day, but I still think they should be easy to follow on first blush.*
One I pass every day has the headline:
CHILDREN IN METH HOUSES
and the first time that's all I got. I figured what followed would be:
SHOULD NOT THROW STONES
Didn't make sense, really, but many don't. Next day I saw:
CHILDREN IN METH HOUSES
STOP IT! STOP IT!
which was quite puzzling. The second part sounds like a child yelling at a sibling ("quit it!"). Then I figured the child is actually yelling at the parent who is running the meth lab: "stop it, mom!" OK, I guess.
I was wrong. Next day, I see it's actually
CHILDREN IN METH HOUSES
SPOT IT! STOP IT!
So I am to be on the lookout for meth houses with kids in them. And stop... "it." It being, I assume, children... in houses.
I get that I'm actually looking for the existence of these children, and I get that in reporting the condition, I might actually put a tweaker out of commission ("No, sir, just here for the kid. You go on back to your business").
I just don't want to think that hard about a billboard.
I liked "stop it stop it" better.
*A separate complaint is the horrible boards going up with scoreboard-style videos running. What is the point of that? To make an already distracting commute worse? In the words of Gob Bluth, COME ON!
1 comment:
Hmm.. Well when I can't understand a billbord, I will ponder it untill we pass one that is shiny and pretty, and then I will just think about how shiny and pretty the second one was.
But there was one that stuck out to me: There was a small boy resting his arms on a metal fence and he looked kind of down. Across the billboard read the slogan
"Easter bunny, tooth-fairy, daddy..
eventually kids stop believing in things they don't see."
It's sad how many can relate to that.
Post a Comment