Incongruously Placed Advertising, S&D

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cite your favorite examples of advertising - print, billboard, radio, tv, internet, whatever - that would've been better served by smarter placement.

For example, this morning, while walking next to Ground Zero, the LCD ad above the Cortland Street subway station was playing an ad for the Republican National Convention.

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 30 April 2004 12:41 (twenty-two years ago)

That's probably pretty intentional. Isn't the RNC as close as possible to Ground Zero this year?

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Friday, 30 April 2004 12:48 (twenty-two years ago)

Madison Square Garden is in midtown, not very close to Ground Zero. But yeah, it's still in New York.

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 30 April 2004 12:48 (twenty-two years ago)

The tire shop near my apartment has a billboard above it...for a different tire shop. And I'm always amused by the corrections page in Slate, which always features an ad for Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections.

This reminds me of one of the first assignments I had in college, which was to dig up a Hannah Arendt article about Walter Benjamin in the The New Yorker and write about how Benjamin's hardscrabble, tragic story about escaping Nazi Germany matched up against ads for watches, cruises and Nehru jackets. We got schooled quick about the insidiousness of both capitalism and fascism quick at the U. of Chicago.

― m.e.a. (m.e.a.), Friday, 30 April 2004 12:50 (twenty-two years ago)

I was just thinking about this myself, after I got a phone call from a small ad-agency, who were trying to sell advertising space to me. The location of the advert was to be on the wall of a doctor's surgery waiting room, which seems pretty weird & unworkable to be, b/c I mean, most people in doctor's waiting rooms are reading old copies of "hello!" or "national geographic", not staring at the walls.

Generally, the ones that make me wonder why they bother are ones on the risers of stairs on public transport, and on urinals in men's public toilets.

The fact that there must be people who walk around looking for public spaces they can colonise and sell to business for advertising purposes, and the likelyhood that such people probably think what they're doing is worthwhile in some way seems really sad to me.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Friday, 30 April 2004 12:51 (twenty-two years ago)

On reflection, I may have confused it with the 2002 RNC (er, are they yearly?) being held close to September 11th.

m.e.a. I don't understand your point. Newspapers be advertising.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Friday, 30 April 2004 12:54 (twenty-two years ago)

RNC is every four years, to nominate president (although kind of useless either because of incumbency or primary voting - at this point they're more like three-day weekend ad campaigns).

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 30 April 2004 12:56 (twenty-two years ago)

About the Slate corrections page, you mean? What amuses me is that it's clearly working off of the Google AdWords algorithm, which works with keywords from the article; Franzen's book doesn't have anything to do with correcting factual errors. Well, it does, yes, but a smarter link would be to a book of famous errors in the Times or something.

Hey, I didn't say I was very amused.

― m.e.a. (m.e.a.), Friday, 30 April 2004 12:58 (twenty-two years ago)

I mean the hardscrabble story versus the ads for expensive things. Were there an increased number of them for that particular story, or was it just they're a magazine, they advertise things?

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Friday, 30 April 2004 13:39 (twenty-two years ago)

New Yorker's target demo is the upper class, they have ads like that every issue (even though broke-as-a-joke jerks like me read it).

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 30 April 2004 13:40 (twenty-two years ago)

I mean the hardscrabble story versus the ads for expensive things. Were there an increased number of them for that particular story, or was it just they're a magazine, they advertise things?

Not any different than usual, I imagine (though this was in the '60s, and it's amazing how thick with ads the New Yorker, along with a lot of mags, were back then).

The point wasn't so much that ads are bad, but whether ads for high-priced gewgaws, juxtaposed against a story about a completely different environment, shifted our perceptions about one or the other. Way meta.

― m.e.a. (m.e.a.), Friday, 30 April 2004 13:58 (twenty-two years ago)

saw the RNC ad again today. Might have to change my route.

― hstencil (hstencil), Monday, 3 May 2004 15:43 (twenty-two years ago)

I misread that as "Might have to change my vote." Which, y'know, frightened me.

― The Huckle-Buck (Horace Mann), Monday, 3 May 2004 15:47 (twenty-two years ago)

sorry, that's not gonna happen, don't worry.

― hstencil (hstencil), Monday, 3 May 2004 15:48 (twenty-two years ago)

Watching Saturday morning cartoons with my son this weekend, I saw advertisements for a hip-hop/r&b show coming to a BAR which only admits people over the age of TWENTY ONE through the doors. At 9:15 am. During a KIRBY commercial break.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Monday, 3 May 2004 15:50 (twenty-two years ago)

Maybe because they know baby's-mamma's be watching too.

― The Huckle-Buck (Horace Mann), Monday, 3 May 2004 15:51 (twenty-two years ago)

um, or baby-daddies!

― teeny (teeny), Monday, 3 May 2004 15:57 (twenty-two years ago)

naw, they probably bought for that timeslot because it was cheap.

― hstencil (hstencil), Monday, 3 May 2004 15:57 (twenty-two years ago)

or possibly the station is sponsoring the event, which means that they get to plaster their logo all over the venue and in exchange the run an ad for it wherever some other ad falls through.

― The Huckle-Buck (Horace Mann), Monday, 3 May 2004 16:00 (twenty-two years ago)

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