Philadelphia Soul Do Marketing Research

The Philadelphia Soul are getting ready for the 2009 season, and what better way to do so than this: A camera that measures how long you look at an ad for the team. The billboard, done by Moto Media, contains a camera that can see if people watching are male or female and their approximate age. All together now: Weird.

The camera doesn’t record anything, says Moto Media. KYW 1060 reports that “some don’t see a problem with the cameras” but also notes that “others say if there’s a camera, people need to be informed.” Oh.

Camera Planned for Local Digital Billboard Raises Concern [KYW 1060]

Philly Coalition Of Reason Billboard

No longer will we have to simply be terrorized on I-95 by multiple Christian billboards; now the atheists have their own billboard, too! It is not nearly as stupid as the one that says “Jesus hated going to church, too,” but it’s up there. Leave alone the weirdness of doing a billboard of, uhm, the sky: I thought the bonus about not being religious was not having to deal with getting together with a bunch of people you don’t really know or like to do chants and such.

I believe it’s time for us to pool our money and get a billboard urging people to worship Jupiter.

Don’t believe in God? You are not alone. [Phillyblog]

Childish Graf Taken To New Levels (Penis!)

Penis graffiti is a well-known tradition on subway ads and school posters. Meh. But when somebody goes out all, like on this Robbins Diamonds sign on 76 near Spring Garden, one just has to applaud:

This has since been taken down, sadly, but Art of the excellent Foobooz had captured it on his iPhone a little bit back. The replacement billboard is the same one, so it’s only a matter of time ’til it happens again. Only one the guy with the jewel in his beard this time.

Local Human Billboards Participate In Publicity Stunt

Yesterday, a Philadelphia couple began a month-long publicity stunt for M&Ms by “exchanging vows” at City Hall. (Don’t worry, this will start to make sense in a minute. Ha ha, just kidding, no it won’t.) Their vow: To communicate with each other using only M&Ms for one month. The point of the stunt is to get local TV stations to write about candy, and, golly gee, it is a success!

Jennifer Farina and Ryan Donlon are not only forbidden to speak with each other for a month, they also aren’t allowed to text message each other. Oh, and a bunch of cameras in their house are going to track their every move to make sure they’re not cheating.

So can one really express emotion with just the letter ‘m’? Well, no. But Mars has given them a bunch of custom-printed M&Ms to promote a website that allows one to purchase custom-printed M&Ms.

Donlon has already categorized their new sweet vocabulary. “I have 9,000 of these at home,” he said. “Different numbers, messages, words, things to communicate how your day was.”

The M&M’s are even color coded for emotions. “Reds are all angry, crazy, mad. The pink ones are all love,” Donlon said.

In the spirit of this promotion, if I see either Ryan or Jennifer during the next 30 days, I’m only going to communicate with two words: you and fuck.

Couple Takes Unusual Vow Of Sweet Silence [CBS 3]

Reason #35 To Love Philadelphia: The Potential For Reflective Billboards

Okay, we don’t have any reflective billboards (yet?), but over at Zoe Strauss’ blog, she proposed such an idea:

Also, I would encourage someone to cover an existing highway billboard with a reflective mylar stretched taut and attached to the frame tight at the top and then pulled out so that the bottom of the mylar was one foot out from the bottom of the billboard frame, thus effectively reflecting the sky. Because who doesn’t need an ad for the sky? I mean, come on!

That would even be even better than the Bernie Parent billboard telling us how he got his hair back. Seriously, someone needs to do this, STAT.

Zoe Strauss Billboard Project [Zoe Strauss]