The Mark of the Beast
Writing Challenge 2024
Posted by Chris Sissons on Mar 27, 2024
Writing Challenge ยป Chris Sissons
What’s gone wrong with on-street advertising? Once upon a time, there was a man with a ladder that goes to a point at the top. He’d hook a bucket to his belt and climb the ladder. Propped against the hoarding, unroll the advert, dip his brush in the paste and slap it on.
It was a marvel to behold as the old advert vanished from view and the new emerged. And soon our man would be on his way whistling his merry paster’s tune!
Have you noticed they’ve virtually disappeared? Slowly, inexorably, paper street adverts have vanished! No more slapping here, slapping it there, paste and paper everywhere – no they’ve gone and we have to ask whether our streets are better for it.
I didn’t anticipate a problem obtaining today’s photo. There’s plenty of examples all over town. There was one just by where the bus stopped. Oh, I thought, I can take a photo and forget about it. Then a van drew up and out leapt a new age Advertisement Engineering Operative and delved into the machine's bowels (sorry wrong body part). I didn’t think they needed to send anyone out, I thought they were controlled from Advert Central somewhere.
The thing about the old-time ads was they became temporary parts of the street scene – gradually bits would peel away. Revealing long-forgotten but strangely familiar bits of ads that had gone before. Then one day, that familiar tune – slap slop and something new delights us or otherwise for a time.
But the real power of these old-style ads was that as you approached them to read the smaller print, they didn’t change! It beats me how the new superefficient modern ads manage to sell anything. As you approach they change! So, you never get any sort of sense of what they’re selling.
Ads Central is ripping off advertisers – all the old advantages of taking time to absorb an ad and hate it or (or occasionally love it) are gone. It’s as if Arthur C Clarke’s mysterious aliens have landed and erected thousands of obsidian pillars and then stuck their tongues out at us.
I don’t suppose anyone has noticed the difference in terms of sales. It’s all brand marketing, which means there’s no way of knowing for certain whether they generate more income than their costs. Maybe these ads are cheaper.
But they’ve altered our streetscapes, ads were always outsiders coming into an area; insiders couldn’t normally afford them. But they at least offered us time to consider whether we wanted to be exploited in this particular way.
It’s why local marketing is kinder, they’re our businesses and it’s in their interests to look out for us.
This is Day 5 of Writing Challenge 2024. People all over the world take part in the WC. We write something every weekday for 4 weeks based on a prompt This year, I'll be sharing 21 articles based loosely on prompts about parts of the body. Do we fully appreciate the role things and stuff play in our lives? Each part of the body has certain things and stuff associated with it. (Probably!) I've no idea where this will go but hope you enjoy the journey. The introductory post was Things and Stuff. The last post was Science and Mirrors and the next is The Weight of the World.
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