Which Would You Prefer

Seeing or hearing an advertisement that is obviously outdated, or seeing/hearing nothing at all?

A couple of recent examples:

There are two new billboards just off of Chinden Blvd, on the North side of the road, near the Hewlett Packard campus. When traveling West, one of the boards is for a movie that was showing on May 30th. At last glance, today’s date is August 11th.

Recently seen on a few ValleyRide buses around town: ads for the Shrine Circus, including a schedule, for events that took place back in mid-June.

Yes, it’s a recurring theme. The media placement and the message have to play well together. Otherwise, it just looks foolish and lazy.

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4 Replies to “Which Would You Prefer”

  1. one might think associated with the “install date” there would be a “take down” date. lazy is probably most appropritate

  2. I hate readerboards that are out-dated. However hard it is to change the advertising on the side of a bus, or on a huge bulletin board — readerboards are WICKED easy to change. Pure and unnecessary laziness.

  3. I actually think it can point to a worse problem than laziness, because it seems to demonstrate something of a calloused lack of caring for customers on the part of advertisers. It can seem to smack of “I’ve gotten what I want from you so I don’t care about you anymore,” or even “I don’t really care about giving my customers good experiences, I just want their money.”

    Of course, the same argument could be made about bad, boorish, tasteless, intellectually insulting, boring, confusing, “so what,” derivative, arrogant, irrelevant, non-empathetic and just plain horrible advertising that’s inflicted upon the public constantly.

    OK…maybe need to lay off the coffee.

  4. Obviously they haven’t been able to sell that ad space for months, so they feel better having something outdated there than nothing at all.

    I’m not sure what’s worse between these two though – an outdated client ad or one of those “Made you look! Your ad could be here!” ads.

    What bugs me even more is when those black and white signs in front of businesses are outdated or inaccurate. Now THAT’S being lazy and/or apathetic.

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