Are your missile defense systems ready?

[by Sunni] (Note: I'll just echo what Todd said about life interfering with blog posting. And back to our regularly scheduled programming...)

In the past couple of months, I've done a little bit of traveling. Nothing exotic (ahem, Todd), mostly for weddings and work. But it gave me an opportunity to check out advertising in such glamorous locations as airports and bathrooms.

Exhibit 1
First of all, both of my examples are advertising campaigns for the government (or government contractors). I'm pretty sure we're all aware that the military has been going the extra mile in terms of nontraditional advertising, what's surprising is when a unique tactic comes from (drum roll, please)... the Library of Congress. Lo and behold, I found the ad at right hanging in the bathroom of a bar. Not a restaurant or upscale pub (you know, one of those places that at least has shelves full of fake books), but a generic bar. Anyone want to take a shot at this one? I'm sort of speechless...

Exhibit 2
This little beauty of advertising is hanging in the airport in Huntsville, AL. For those of you not familiar with Huntsville, let me give you a brief introduction: NASA was started there, and it remains the location of Marshall Space Flight Center. As the command center for all space-bound science experiments, Marshall is arguably the nerdiest of the three mission controls (Johnson and Kennedy are the other two). The rest of Huntsville is also impressively nerdy. There are a disproportionate number of PhDs, physicists and engineers in the city, and we can even lay claim to the founder of Wikipedia.

Of course, none of this comes anywhere near explaining the airport advertising. There is not one piece of the usual lifestyle ads featuring high-tech smart phones or perfume from the duty-free shop. Roughly 99% of the advertising in the Huntsville International Airport is geared toward the government contractor. After a brief walk through the terminal of this airport any traveler would know how to purchase a Boeing Globemaster III, lift heavy artillery into said transport aircraft, and then arm their missile defense systems. I tell you, the question of whether or not my personal missile defense system is ready has kept me awake at night. Good thing AGI has strategically positioned advertising to calm my fears... (I can't make this stuff up.)

Click on the image for the full power of the ad, as well as the call to action to visit the website.   

Comments

[Todd Copilevitz]

Oddly enough I think AGI stole that line from a birth control company.

[sunni]

Wow - I can't believe I didn't even predict that one... Kudos.

I also want to make sure everyone looks carefully at the upper lefthand corner of the AGI ad -- notice the "Evaluate multiple threat models." Seriously, it's just too much...