Monday, April 7, 2014

Yeah, this should bring in the crowds.

I recently lambasted a poster designed to recruit teachers. Today I saw another equally inept poster. This one was for Miami Metrozoo. The headline was,"Fun in the Sun". Since it was for a zoo one might imagine that it would show some animal, wild or not. A giraffe would be nice. Or how about a zebra? But no. This poster showed a little girl in a bathing suit getting wet from some kind of hose or fountain. In the background were a few other young girls. There wasn't a hint of a zoo anywhere, and it could easily have been somebody's backyard. How do posters like this get produced and displayed? Didn't anyone at the the zoo protest?

Note: Unfortunately I cannot find the poster on the Internet, so I have chosen this stock photo to give you some idea of the spirit of the poster. Exuberant to be sure, but nothing whatever to do with a zoo.

3 comments:

  1. Having once worked for the Zoological Society of Florida (and I don't know if it was ZSF or the county that paid for the poster you describe, I can guarantee you that nobody protested. In fact, quite the opposite. They want to be a "theme park" that can draw people in for more reasons than "just animals." The irony is that Disney, up in Orlando, felt that it had to open a zoo.

    P.S. When Metrozoo opened its koala exhibit, they launched an ad campaign with the headline "RARE BEAR." As we all know, koalas are marsupials, not bears. I understand that the zookeepers did squawk about that one, but the headline stood.

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  2. I wouldn't even be as offended if the visual look anything like a theme part. That is looks like someone's front lawn is what astonishes me.

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  3. Alas, I fear that today's creative departments completely lack people who would be smart enough to point that out.

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