When employees of Farmers & Merchants Bank arrived at work this morning, they were greeted by death itself. Fifteen feet above the parking lot, a witch lay lifeless — straddling her broom, and a second-floor guardrail.

Onlookers stared up in stunned silence — frozen by the kind of eeriness that cloaks sleepy towns during the first ten minutes of a horror movie.

The  branch manager recalls: "I totally screamed. Then I got sick." 

A teller said, "Dude, I thought she was totally faking, but then I threw a rock at her and she didn't move and I like, threw it pretty hard."

Initially, onlookers speculated the witch was attempting a sunrise takeoff when her broom just failed, but the paramedics first on the scene painted a more gruesome picture.

"See this? This bruise on the right side of her face? I'm no Quincy, M.D., but it looks she came in head first at about sixty miles an hour."

"Ten bucks says it was more like ninety," the second paramedic said. "A witch's skull can probably take sixty, but ninety? That's kamikaze shit right there." 

Click thumbnail at right to view enlarged image. 

I was at the mall today and walked by this scene just inside Abercrombie & Fitch. I just happened to have my camera. 

I am a genuine lover of technological progress. If a company makes their stuff smaller and/ or cooler than the next company, I'll probably buy it. Next month, as a matter of fact, I'll have purchased Apple iPod #4, though I still dig big the retro look and feel of my first scroll wheel iPod, circa 2001 A.D.

Just recently, evolution happened upon the local Tallahassee outdoor advertising industry when the first digital display was built on Thomasville Road near Market Street. If you've never seen a digital billboard, don't worry, it's nothing to put up a billboard about. It's basically a large flat screen TV that plays a slide show of advertisements. Motion graphics are not allowed since it would become the very worst kind of road hazard – one that detracts attention from our cell phone conversations.

You’d think this would be a welcome improvement, but I've yet to discover the "improvement" part of the equation.

On a traditional billboard, an ad agency sets up the design for the client, and the company that actually owns the billboard structure prints a vinyl sign for about $500. The vinyl sheet is then clamped onto the billboard, which is when a company begins to pay rent for their ad based on an ever-changin formula that includes figures like:  

Anyway, for about $1,500 – $2,000 per month, the advertisement stays up for the duration of the contract. It's up 100% of the time — that's every second of every minute of every hour of every day.

On the other hand, when businesses advertise on a digital billboard, they share space and time with as many as five other businesses, with the ads rotating once every six seconds. That means each businesses' ad will be viewed for six seconds per minute — twelve seconds at most if your ad appeared early enough in the rotation. During the other part of the minute, well, the other businesses take turns sitting on the throne. But be patient. Your chance will come around again in about 36 seconds.

While you wait, here's the kicker: On a digital display, an advertisement will stay up about 16% of the time for about 25% more cost as compared to a traditional billboard. Upon realizing this fact, I was hoping my rep would explain further, but he started to sprinting toward closing the sale.

"The great thing is," my rep said, "you can change the message at a moment's notice, and there are no production costs."

"But still, you've raised the price by almost what it cost to produce a regular billboard," I said.

"Do you know how much one digital display costs to build?"

"Do you know what the price of gold in Namibia is?"

"What? What does that have to do with anything?… Did I mention you can change the message at a moment's notice?!" he both asked and exclaimed. His voice was at odds with itself, yet selling at full tilt. He went on: "Ok like, say your client has a breakfast special, a lunch special, and a dinner special — you can change the message to advertise each meal special!"

"What a royal pain in the ass." Change the message three times a day? I'd have to hire one person to handle just my clients' billboard messages.

"That's not a pain, that's smart," he said. "It allows you to target people anytime of the day."

The other line clicked in. It was my accountant, who also happens to be a client to whom I could never, in good conscience, recommend a digital display.

"Hey Steve, we should do one of those digital displays — we can have one message in the morning and another in the afternoon for like a thousand more dollars a month, but the good thing is, you don't have to pay for printing the vinyl sign!" His response would probably be a very hearty, "Who gives a crap?"

"I've gotta take this call," I said, "it's my gold guy in Namibia."

In an effort to be different, and to endear himself to a potential audience, a local realtor may have overlooked the risk of collateral perception damage.
 
I drove by this billboard, read it, and thought inexperienced, which could be quite far from the truth. Bert could be the biggest, most respected real estate tyke in Tallahassee, but he wouldn't be perceived that way after this billboard went up.

When I'm in need of a little nipping and tucking, this is exactly the kind of surgeon I look for — a feline-loving, champagne-drinking, formally coiffed gentleman with easy access to anaesthesia and very sharp objects. Next to an image like that, I believe the headline "Not your average plastic surgeon," can be safely classified as redundant.

Click thumbnail to view billboard. 

For a small fee, our local newspaper (and perhaps even yours!) will circle or inventively mark any classified ad you place. It is a shrewd and deliciously stealth bit of marketing trickery that is 100% effective. Just this morning, I was fooled into inquiring about and purchasing a 2006 Nissan Armada, a 1993 Honda Civic, and a 1967 Selectric typewriter. 

On the bright side, I wasn't taken by other ads that were visually punctuated with headers like, "Boo!" "Wow!" and, my personal favorite, "Look," with two cartoon eyes set between the "L" and "K" — as if they were actually reading your ad! 

Click thumbnail to view image. 

Bank of America has decided that my wife is one of us. Although her red hair and green eyes all but yell, "I'm an Anglo-saxon with no apparent ties to the Caribbean!" she received a credit card offer written entirely in Spanish. The only thing she can read in the offer is "No postage necessary if mailed in the United States". Being the only full-blooded Hispanic in the household not counting my chihuahua, I have yet to receive anything in Spanish from the bank. Nada.

Bank of America jumped the gun in this marketing effort. In the hopes of saying, "We know you and we know what products you need from our bank," they've demonstrated the opposite. They would have gotten closer to the truth had they sent the offer in German.

I shouldn't be the one to have to break it to her that, in the eyes of some companies, she's one of us. She's perfectly happy with her born-into ethnicity, and so am I. If she starts talking fast and hyphenating all her past family names, Bank of America will be getting an irate phone call from un hombre bravo.

Que tenga un buen día.