Made a facebook comment the other day to an outdoor advert I think might be worthy of a post:

"The message though admirable is confusing – who is this woman? Is she an extreme master who doesn't feel the cold? Is that why she's got that look of concentration? What's the snow and ice got to do with it all? Why is she a hovering apparition of a torso? Was the poster made with Microsoft word? If superfluous adjectives are the go why not call it Absolute Supreme Master TV or The Most Omnipresent Absolute Supreme Extreme Master TV? Took this @ Wynyard station – and I love it!"

We’ll it just made me think about all the money that goes into advertising and when done badly, it kind of seems like a waste. 

Rather than just poke fun, I want to offer a solution. My opinion is in an oversaturated environment of advertising messages – simplicity actually stands out. Now that's a no brainer but it's still rarely executed and that in itself offers advertisers an real opportunity. The image below (in the black) was a quick Photoshopping to illustrate an alternative. 

So in light of that I’d remove everything on this billboard. I’d appeal to the more selfish nature of us all because saving the planet is just too hard and people tend to ignore the too hard. Basically it’s all about getting people to SaveYourself.com. This landing page would put a case for how saving the planet in fact is an act of saving yourself… do this through a bunch of real stories or interviews with interesting people – perhaps you’d offer community contributions etc. The SumpremeMaster.TV is the consistent back-drop to all this. You take it out of people’s faces and get them interested enough to want to find out more.

It all comes down to movement, advertising needs to activate movement because in the end that’s what an exchange is – it moves energy in terms of goods, service, experience through capital. If any advert is a mental dead-end it’s likely to be an exchange dead-end too and that can’t be too good for the bottom line.