A Musing About Billboards
I have a problem with the bozo that puts his (or her) face on a billboard to advertise his (or her) business. I’m not talking about fashion models here. I’m talking about the ordinary (or even ugly) looking guy who happens to own a car dealership and thinks nearly one-half of the billboards should be devoted to his face.
A typical billboard is 14 feet by 48 feet. How would you like to see a 14 foot by 14 foot photograph of your face on a billboard? If you answered this with a “Yeah”, then you have an ego to match that of a car dealer.
I don’t mean to pick on car dealers, but they seem to believe, more than other business owners, that customers won’t frequent their business unless the customer knows what the owner looks like. Insurance agents are a distant second. I’m not sure if there is any business type which deserves a rank of third.
But why would you do it? Is there a market study which suggests that you can increase sales by putting your ugly face on a billboard? I have no credentials in marketing, but I did search the internet for some marketing tips. I found NOTHING to suggest any positive correlation between sales and ugly billboard photographs.
This leads me to believe that there is only one reason why a business owner features his face, prominently, on a billboard. That reason is EGO.
Maybe it is nice to be recognized. Say you are walking down the street with your family, and someone walks by and immediately recognizes you. The passerby might say: “Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere? Are you somebody famous?”
If the passerby had better recall, he might say something like: “I know you. I drive by a 14 foot picture of you every day on the way to work. You are even uglier in person than you are on the billboard.”
Here’s my suggestion. Or if I were Bill Maher, here’s my New Rule. Unless you have the good looks of a fashion model, keep your face off a billboard.
As an aside, if you want to pretend to learn more about the “ego”, then I suggest you read the essay “Ego – The Falser Center” by Osho. I’ve always been suspicious about people with only one name, and this essay confirms my suspicion. The essay is incredibly nonsensical and circular.
Here is but one example: “If you know the false as false, truth will dawn upon you.” OK, I follow that.
Here is another example: “One has to pass through the chaos before one attains to the real center.” Now I’m lost. If anyone figures out what this means, please let me know.
If, on the other hand, you are interested in advertising on a billboard, you should first read “How To Advertise On A Billboard”. Here’s the first of the six “how to” tips: “Consider carefully whether this will be money well spent.” I’m not sure if I would have thought of that one.
A few more in-depth billboard advertising tips is an article entitled Costly Billboard Advertising Mistakes. Curiously, the list does not mention ugly pictures of the owner.
The best information yet on billboards is several decades old! It is an article by Howard Gossage, ad man of the 1950s and 60s. I highly recommend his 1960 article in Harper’s, entitled How To Look At Billboards. It still has amazing vitality today.
It includes a wonderful allegory on how outdoor advertising got started. His primary question, though, is this: “Has outdoor advertising the right to exist at all”?
Gossage says NO, because the outdoor advertising industry sells a commodity that doesn’t really belong to it – it belongs to you!
What the industry sells is not the product advertised on the billboard. What the industry sells is YOUR FIELD OF VISION. Advertisers pay billboard owners to block your field of vision, and insert its message in its path.
Here are my favorite quotes from Gossage:
”Outdoor advertising is, of course, a business and as such would ordinarily have a strong case against inroads on its domain. However, there is a very real question whether it has title to its domain. Outdoor advertising is peddling a commodity it does not own and without the owner’s permission: your field of vision. Possibly you have never thought to consider your rights in the matter. Nations put the utmost importance on unintentional violations of their air space. The individual’s air space is intentionally violated by billboards every day of the year.”
And:
”A billboard has no other function, it is there for the sole and express purpose of trespassing on your field of vision. Nor is it possible for you to escape; the billboard inflicts itself unbidden upon all but the blind or recluse. Is this not an invasion of privacy? I think it is,
Moreover, this invasion of your privacy is compounded in its resale to a third party. It is as though a Peeping Tom, on finding a nice window, were to sell peeps at two bits a head.”
Fascinating stuff (and please read)!
Note: “Billboard Bozos” was first published in my blog, Wolverine Café, on August 12, 2005. As was my practice in the blog, it contained many links built within the text to allow the reader a means for further exploration. I’m certain many of these linked-sites don’t exist anymore, so I didn’t try to find all of them.
But I did find another auto dealer billboard, which was shown on the top of the page, and a billboard which expressed my feelings, which was shown on in the middle of the page. And I found one particularly funny billboard, which is below.
