Tuesday, March 05, 2013

Bowie billboard (sort of)

hi there

we have a rather contentious form of advertising here in the form of miniature billboards stuck on lamp posts in the middle section of the highways. quite a few people consider them to be illegal on the grounds that they are highly distracting for drivers. with the roads here being already treacherous to the point of lethal it is not like there is a particular need to make people drive even worse here.

if they are indeed illegal no one seems to have rushed to have them all removed. there is little surprise about that, considering for the most part they seem to be used by the ANC to show off what they have apparently done in Government, with the odd one or two of the billboards every now and then suggesting that stealing electricity cables is very bad. in regards of the latter, it would be interesting to learn of someone who was quite enthusiastic about stealing such cables all of a sudden stop as they saw a billboard telling them it was on the whole a naughty thing to do.

every now and then, though, regular advertising appears on these billboards. mostly it tends to be a load of rubbish about shoes or similar, but sometimes they have a class advert up. like, for instance, this week they seem to have decided to advertise the new Bowie album on them!



sorry for the "distance shot", but i was driving at the time and this was the best i could do when the traffic had come to a halt. in bizarre circumstances, i found it to be frustrating that the traffic moved a bit better today, as it did not allow me to stop and take a closer picture. go figure.

i am struggling to think of any more recent advertising for an album here like this since U2's Pop album back in, what was it, 1997? to my knowledge Bowie does not have all that big a fan base here, which is perhaps why Sony have taken the decision to advertise their product. as my review indicated, it's a great album and hopefully it will indeed sell well.

here's a slightly better quality picture of a second billboard thingie advertising it. you can't quite make out the text, but it strangely says that it is available now on CD when it is not; the release date as far as i am aware is March 11.



if you are thinking "hang on, these blueberry pictures are of a much better quality than usual" it's because they are. more on that in another post, no doubt, but in short my original blueberry phone with the awful camera went all nancy boy on me in the face of a little bit of water and thus i have a new one. it has loads of them megapixel things in the camera.
as i said above, advertising a new album is somewhat out of the ordinary here. usually such advertising is limited to catalogues from the music stores with the odd advert popping up here and there on the radio. a bold approach, then, and with some luck it will pay off for them!




be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No comments: