Bad Media Buyer. Bad. Bad.

May 30th, 2006 | Filed under Business, Humor, Marketing, Photos

As the girlfriend, her mother and I bopped around Hutchinson this weekend, we kept driving up and down Main Street picking up groceries for our BBQ. Every time we passed Johnson’s Music Center* Teressa and I would laugh out loud at the most poorly placed piece of outdoor media ever.

If you can’t see the picture very well, I apologize. I was taking the picture on a whim, out of the car window at a stoplight. Basically the ad says “blogging delivered” with an at&t logo and some very Web 2.0 colors and fonts. While I agree with Seth Gunderson in regards to the unintended message the ad is sending, I do think they are kind of cool ads…if you are smart enough to understand that at&t is not making, or helping you create a weblog.

Most people in Hutchinson, however, are not. A billboard on the northern end of the Hutchinson downtown is not the place for this type of ad. 99.9999999 percent of people that drive by that billboard have absolutely no idea what in the world “blogging” means, and unfortunately could care less. Some kids might associate it with the dreaded myspace or xanga, but this is the worst ad placement I have ever seen.

The media buyer for this account should be fired. Now. Okay, maybe that was a little harsh. At the very least they should stop and maybe do a little bit of research about the target market in this area. Just slapping the latest national campaign from the mothership on a billboard downtown does not translate into new sales. If anything he/she just alienated a ton of potential internet users because they have no idea what “blogging” is and the interwebs are obviously to complicated for them…or so they think. This is just silly…but it definitely made me laugh over and over again.

*I do not endorse Johnson’s Music as I am far and away a fan of Dave down at Keller’s Instrument Repair.

Update: I also wanted to post a direct link to Seth’s mockups of other ads that at&t might be interested in using. These are fantastic.