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ADVERTISING
- August 2000 by Dennis Altman Vital Signs in the
Bluegrass
On the Hollywood Freeway, there’s a billboard with four sleek models in bikinis. The headline says, “The more you pay, the less you get….Ohrbach’s.” In New York, a board over an Exxon/fast food combination has the headline, “Eat here and get gas”. That not only has a New York stand-up tonality, but it tells you something about the advertisers – they don’t fear a misinterpretation. Both boards convey a sense of literacy that is hard to find in other American communities. So this month, we’ll take a macro-view of some outdoor boards in the Bluegrass, and see if they can tell us something about us. In the six years I’ve lived in the home of horses, hoops and hootch, I’ve seen very few local billboards that try to appeal to a literate audience. But there are some. To wit: The Remmele Animal Clinic now bills its canine beauty shop as “Groomingdale’s”. Last month, the Southside Church of Christ sported a marquee that said, “Free trip to Heaven… Inquire within”.) Health and tobacco
Even Tobacco Road, that seeming fugitive from another age, is alert enough to get on the light touch bandwagon with their invitation to “Visit our non-smoking section”. Two
Cheers for Vine Street Trust I applaud the Vine Street showing because it’s about a real product difference. The bank has targeted the upscale market. “Sophisticated Banking” is not for the faint of purse. I’ll award the third cheer when they give people a tangible reason to switch their business. So much for the good news. The
Subtlety of a Bludgeon The headline is a lift from a quip Marilyn Monroe used 40 years ago. It worked for her because she was talking about herself. This photo is quite another thing. It’s a heavy-handed, meat market shot having all the charm of pigs in heat. The
Dual Doppler dodge So there they are. Six boards to judge the Bluegrass culture by. One belongs on the wall of a high school dropouts club and one is so self-serving that its target audience can’t understand it. The other four campaigns are more encouraging. They show promise, purpose and a proclivity to say something meaningful. The local outdoor scene is still without style, standards or tradition. And as long as it stays that way, we’d be well advised to put more money into education. Dennis Altman is an advertising consultant and a UK Professor of Advertising and Public Relations |
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The sage who said,
“You can know a nation by its advertisements,”
was a pretty fair social diagnostician. His theory also
works for smaller communities. And outdoor advertising is
the skin where all the symptoms appear. 
There isn’t much
to chuckle about in the new Vine Street Trust campaign,
but it stands out against the current crop of yada-yada
bank boards that are all about nothing. 
At the
lowest taste level in this month’s outdoor
cavalcade, we have Double Q radio. Their visual is a
totally artless photo of three women with their clothes
off. That’s not the problem. I find nothing wrong
with nudity. But there’s a difference between art
and gross insensitivity. 
We also have to note
a major puzzlement. The Dual Doppler display is written
in code. I happen to know that the only people who can
decipher it are the guy in the picture, and three close
friends who meet monthly at the Meterologist’s
Chowder and Marching Society in Sadieville. Am I being
obscure? Not nearly as much as this vanity ad.