Daniel Park

Page 1

Happy Families

Daniel Park

The key to successful advertising is never take no for an answer. That’s why the moving billboard is so insidious. It looks so innocent and then whammo! the frozen image of a grinning aryan child erupts into cheezy giggles, the pretty ladies’ frenchweave tights go up and up and up like an elevator in the Eiffel tower, the grinning family in matching hooped polo-shirts jive along to a little ditty for the pre-requisite 4.8 seconds of optimal exposure, before the grinning child reappears, cheezier still. It doesn’t work of course, commuters are more intent on fighting the ticket barriers with their metrocards than succumbing to the lure of Pampers, pantyhose or Pringles. Yet I can’t tear my eyes off this magic picture box, loaded with images utterly alien to my existence, to say nothing of my precious market segmentation. It’s like visiting another world of happy families, 70s sitcoms and the land of lost content. Like scoffing an endless arctic roll in front of Terry and June episodes on repeat; innocent, but deadly. I press my face against the flickering screen, a jumble of the gaily coloured beads searing my optic nerves and yet, try as I might, this leopard cannot change its spots, and the advertising norm takes “no” as their answer to my happy family.


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