Right off the bat, I have to say that this is a first-class illustration. The first thing that struck me was: New York skyscrapers in a waterfall. Normally, I wouldn’t take time to read the small copy, but in this case, I wanted to understand what they were trying to say.
The message of the ad is that parks in New York are much better than parks in other states because they have to work hard to compete with New York City. This is ridiculous.
Then they use this tag line:
Workaholic Parklands.
Sometimes I think I should have named this blog “What the F—?” because that’s what I continually find myself saying. I can’t speak to whether a particular ad is effective at achieving its goal because I don’t have access to an organization’s sales reports. All I can do is explain what I think is effective in getting a particular message across.
Maybe people are going to read this ad, understand what it’s trying to say, and then visit one of New York’s many scenic parklands.
But maybe there’s a better way to tell people that New York isn’t just Manhattan without trying to be so clever that the message is lost.
