The laziest form of advertising
If you have ever crawled past a 100 kilometers an hour speed zone at 5 kilometers an hour, wriggled in your seat to avoid the morning sun’s heat, madly changed radio stations to avoid Guy Sebastian’s latest single, breathed in copious amount of poisonous gases spewing out of the car’s exhaust in front and burned the hell out of whatever is left of your clutch as you stop, start, get into third (horray!), quickly brake and start then stop again, then you will understand why ‘moving billboards’, or ‘mobile advertising’ is the worst, most inconvenient, most laziest form of advertising.
As I drove, nah stammered to work through a flurry of painful movements between neutral and first, I was confounded to see amongst the congestion a large truck with a giant billboard attached to its tray advertising the latest A-League game. This truck was easily as long as two perhaps three cars and its sole purpose was to get in the way of as many cars as possible (and therefore be seen by as many people as possible).
This type of advertising is, on so many levels, down-right insulting to the public as rational, thinking human beings. Even more important than the absolute inconvenience created by its presence, is the environmental harm this is doing. It creates its own particularly obnoxious pollution and as an added bonus exacerbates congestion and therefore the amount of pollution produced as a whole. In a time when it seems each new year brings with it new and equally strange weather behavior and “once in a lifetime” weather patterns, this form of advertising should be banned as just one way for us as a society to lessen our carbon footprint.
Some would suggest that because we are discussing this, that the advertising have won. I would hope that the opposite is true – that we could all be a little more discerning and deliberately not support the companies who advertise using these lazy and inconsiderate methods. Surely there is more creative and respectful ways to advertise.
Yours in design,
Ben-ycneme
