Ads

I love seeing different ads when I visit cities. While most of us remain unaware of the regional differences in advertising, they can be considerable.

Back in 1999, when Palm did some blitz advertising, they had a series of ads featuring nude women holding a Palm. Mostly, these were billboards, but at least one of them was a bus stop poster. When you looked at what was on the Palm device, it was a ToDo list. The first item read, “Buy Clothes.”

When I landed in Washington D.C. on Friday, I saw an ad I thought was similarly amusing, but intended for an entirely different audience.

Paraphrased, it said, “When our telecom laws were written, a blackberry was just a fruit.” It featured a photo of a bowl of cereal with a Blackberry PIM in the middle. On the Blackberry’s screen was a single word: “Yum!”

• conventions
• notes

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