The Billboard Cliché

Admen love nothing more than the comfort of a cliché. The tried and tested, the familiar and time-honoured bring reassurance to the exhausted imagination. The more inventive may attempt a little subversion to enhance or even undermine the original intentions but for the most part what we get is recycling pure and simple. Chris Mullen has curated more than 10,000 platitudinous examples to delight the eye and intellect at the Visual Primer of Advertising Clichés. Today we look at the billboard cliché – imagine the conversation. We take the product off the shelf and on to the great American Highway. We pass a billboard that displays an oversize ad for our product and we get two ads for the price of one and an amplified message even more difficult to ignore. Whether any research has been done to prove this, I’ve no idea. There is something in the idea of an ad embedded in another – an act of quotation. But it’s very hard to see how that would translate into additional sales. 

Global Ambitions

When businesses expand, dreams of worldwide domination with consumers in every land and advertising in every language begin to form. There will be a network of offices across the globe and the name in lights in the centre of every major city. A reputation for excellence will extend into the most remote regions of the planet. To become part of a supra-national global community orbiting the earth at supersonic velocity, detached from the deadweight of national allegiance was the ambition of the visionary CEO. Advertising agencies stood prepared to translate these glittering visions into reality with the assistance of a well-stocked repertoire of clichés. Foremost among these were images of the globe, infinitely adaptable and instantly recognisable. We present a small selection below but a special mention for Colgate whose loyal customers were rewarded with a globe of their own to dominate in the privacy of their own homes. 

Spirit in the Sky

An enduring cliché in the world of advertising is the spirit in the sky that imparts a celestial presence to an otherwise banal scene. An overarching symbol of wisdom or power floats in the heavens – an ethereal deity that guides the corporate destiny. In another approach we see the guiding hand of lifelong experience transmitting hard won skills through the generations. It’s all part of the eternal struggle to develop a corporate soul that can speak directly to the consumer’s innermost sense of identity. At least in the 1950s there remained some residual respect for the intelligence of the audience. Today’s advertisers are ever more confident that even the most odious, cold-hearted, exploitative businesses can be presented to the public as their best friend with the aid of a few cuddly toys, an ingratiating regional accent and an intensely irritating jingle interminably repeated.