One of the great races ad people compete in is seeing who can find the oddest, most unassuming place to stick their client’s latest ad. Those who mark the territory first are hailed for years to come as the advertising guru who gave new meaning to thinking outside the box. However, sometimes the place is a little too unassuming. A new trend developing in odd advertising real estate is cornfields. Yes, the corn-yielding, creepy-rows-of-stalks, deep-in-the-country cornfield (see below for McDonald’s, Verizon Wireless, and Starbucks ads).
I first have to applaud the people who go out and actually create these ads, spending hours snapping stalks in accordance to a pre-drawn map. I can’t even imagine how grueling and… well, dull of a task that must be (I hope they’re at least paying you well!). I second have to wonder what drugs were coursing through the ad person’s body who first came up with this idea. Even though it’s different, it’s not exactly the type of “in-the-consumer’s-face” different that marks an ad as novel. There are only 3 ways a consumer could view this ad:
1) Actually going to the cornfield (but, as I said, they’re hidden deep in the underbelly of rural life and this won’t provide any sort of view of the overall image).
2) If they happen to look out the window of their plane at the exact right moment (and considering how fast planes travel, I would say that they have a total of a 5 second chance to glimpse a view).
3) Nightly news, daily newspaper, or an Internet article.
So, of the three, the third option is more likely. I really hope these companies have written up a damn good press release because if not, some corn farmer has just wasted a lot of time… and corn.
