Johnny America

 

Com­ments on New York City Sub­way Advertising

by

Cin­gu­lar Wireless:

Your cur­rent cam­paign sug­gests var­i­ous thrifty things I might do; trav­el­ing to JFK to rent a car, get­ting a hair­cut at the beau­ty school, tak­ing cole slaw home in a bag, etc. Thus I ought to be will­ing to get your Rollover Min­utes plan.

In­ter­est­ing the­o­ry, but wait: You claim that I pur­chase an un­lim­it­ed Metro­Card and the “ride the 1 train from 68th to 72nd”? Here’s where you’re wrong, my friends. The 1 (al­so 9) stops at 66th, not 68th. I’m not fa­mil­iar enough to know if there is an en­trance to this sta­tion at 68th, but re­gard­less the sta­tion names, not the en­trance points, are gen­er­al­ly ref­er­enced. Per­haps you will say that the dif­fer­ence of two blocks is neg­li­gi­ble. But is that not your point? You could’ve made the same anal­o­gy us­ing the 1 train from 14th to 18th. That is ac­tu­al­ly four blocks, at two ac­tu­al sta­tions. Or is there some Up­per West Side ap­peal you’re go­ing for? Wise up, Cin­gu­lar Wire­less! The Up­per West Side is not hip.

Sec­ond­ly, your the­o­ry that I save mon­ey by choos­ing “out­side” fruit in­stead of “in­side” fruit makes no sense to me. I have pur­chased many pieces of fruit in my time, at many dif­fer­ent venues, yet this ques­tion has nev­er been posed. Please advise.

Ver­i­zon Superpages:

Your mas­cot, a talk­ing tele­phone book, is per­haps the least ap­peal­ing thing ever to be an­thro­po­mor­phized for ad­ver­tis­ing pur­pos­es. Why did­n’t you give it big eyes, and a pleas­ant de­meanor? In­stead, some at­tempt at an in-your-face at­ti­tude, it comes off like smarmy guy on the make. “If this train were any more crowd­ed, I’d be stand­ing in your pants,” it says. You’d be what? No, you wouldn’t.

Filed under Commentary on August 12th, 2004

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