The Irony of Advertisement Placement (along with some hard work)

Today I was browsing Reddit, just as I usually do when I want to spend most of my time trying not really accomplish anything, and came across quite an interesting post which showed the uniqueness of two specific bulletin board ads over a free way which some else had also found quite amusing. This is what the post linked me to:

At first i just took a quick glance at what seemed to be another annoying post with nothing of to much value within it. However, after closing the page I thought about what I had just looked at and decided to reopen the page just to confirm my suspicions. Sure enough what i had previously thought was a meaningless picture turned out to be quite a shock. As I continued to think over the similarities between these two advertisements two things immediately came to my mind. First, the complete irony that these two bill boards out of probably billions were put together. I couldn't stop thinking about just how horrible the advertisement placement was for these two businesses. This brought me to my second, and a little bit more depressing idea that most people while passing by this on the freeway would probably get the sudden urge to go and buy something at McDonald's instead of thinking about how they could help the the many people in need. This thought just shows how selfish our society really is, although maybe we're just more unaware of the outside struggles that we do not have to face.

The more I looked at the advertisements, contemplating the skills used to put each together, the more i realized that each organization really did have semanticists working for them. Of course i had known this before but looking at these to boards i realized this even more.

The feedmichigan.org board emphasized the idea that by only spending one dollar one can provided five meals. What i thought was interesting was that in smaller print it says that it "helps provide" which also means that your one dollar doesn't guarantee the five meals thought one might at first think it does. By making the "Every $1" and "5 meals" in bold print it draws the readers attention to those words. And sense the reader is going by at about 60 or so miles and hour they might not think to focus on the other words and just assume that the donation of simply one dollar will be able to buy five meals for those in need even though this might not really be true. It seems, at least in my opinion, that the semanticists and other advertisement specialists for this company did quite a successful job on this particular board.

The McDonald's board also seemed to use these tactics and made it very simple for the audience that i flying past. By only putting two words on the board drivers and passengers can easily read the board and even be tempted to go and take advantage of the great one dollar deal. Since the word "dollar" is in bold it seems to me that they are trying to focus on the idea that it is such a great deal and that you can really get the most bang for your buck or so the saying goes. The next word, or last depending on how you look at it, "delishness" simply tries to work on the audience's appetite and i have no doubt in my mind that these advertisers spent quite a few hours if not days contemplating what word would be the best to finish with and i think this really fits their needs.

After thinking about these two advertisements for so long I really began to think about the job of the advertising company and how hard they probably work to get these bill boards as perfect as possible. My only note would be to find a better place for it because after all they really are in probably the most ironic place possible for what they are wanting to accomplish.