posted
Recently while driving around Allentown, PA where I live, I have noticed some unusual billboards popping up along the highways, and in great numbers. The billboards are all for a new product called Outhouse Springs, a brand of drinking water. However, the billboards are, as I said...unusual. Here's what a few say:
"Outhouse Springs: We're #1 In #2!" "Outhouse Springs: L-M-N-O-*bottle of the water*" "Outhouse Springs: Truely Tasteless Water" "Outhouse Springs: Bottling water at 98.6 degrees in small batches"
The billboards all basically look the same, and they all feature a bottle with a literal outhouse on the logo with some flowers. To put it simply, people are supposed to assume Outhouse Springs Water is nothing more then recycled human waste!
Except it's fake.
Adam's Outdoor Advertising, a billboard company based in the south, is to blame for this. The Outhouse Springs billboards first started popping up in Charleston, South Carolina before moving to Allentown, Pennsylvania (where Adam's has a local office), and have now apparently spread out into the midwest (reports of them in Madison, Wisconsin have been found). Adam's also went so far as to send what looked like actual bottles of Outhouse Springs water to the local media (including our own Morning Call). To add to the effect, they came wrapped in toilet paper. Adam's claimed that the makers of the water were merely testing it out, yet wanted to remain anonymous.
Soon, people were talking about what this mysterious new disgusting water was, and actually where to get some. And so the media was hounded and South Carolina newspapers and our own Morning Call actually ran an article.
So, what's the reasoning for this? Adam's Outdoor Advertising bought up disused billboards and put these ads up merely to show off the power of billboards to marketers. And they worked. People saw these billboards and obviously payed attention to them, so they became popular. Adam's did this just so they can go to clients and tell them that they should pay for billboards, and they have the numbers to prove it with this Outhouse Springs deal. So the entire thing was a marketing coup by Adam's to increase their business.
And quite frankly I think its a damn good, and hilarious idea.
In case you're still wondering, no, there is no real Outhouse Springs (although a few bottles were made to give to the media and to show off, but they're just normal water with changed labels).
-------------------- "Lotta people go through life doing things badly. Racing's important to men who do it well. When you're racing, it's life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting."
-Steve McQueen as Michael Delaney, LeMans
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic
