This is the Sign Your Friend Said You'd See If You'd Gone Too Far.It's an ad for Beefeater Gin. It's really similar to the Ketel One magazine ads I've been seeing ("Attention Ketel One drinker, this is a Ketel One ad...blah blah blah.) in that it has
1) a white background/black text foreground
2) ad text that does not refer to product, but to the advertisement itself.
I can't imagine this approach working real well. What's the hook? That the company is so free of artifice that they can be trusted? That their product is also artifice-free? I'ts probably just about being different enough to get the product name stuck in one's head.
I think that the Ketel One ads work a bit better. They refer to the actual product in the text, albiet obliquely. So I knew what they were for without going to Google, which is what i had to do to find out what the Beefeater ads were selling.
And they're not so confusing and ambiguous. It's hard to argue with that statement. -Yes, the Ideal Reader says, it is an ad for Ketel One. The Beefeater Billboard is much more ambiguous. In the context of selling us something to pickle our liver in, the phrase "gone too far" has quite a few separate connotations, and it resists contextual disambiguation (to borrow a phrase from Stan Kelly-Bootle (I like how it gives agency to the phrase is question)). Like this:
Interpretation one(probably what they are actually trying to convey, I think.)Have we passed the party? Must we turn back? Turning back from this billboard would put us in 5 points, which let's face it, is not where the target demographic's friends live and throw partys.
Interpretation two. This is an advertisement for something that is a physical location, and you just passed it. Like those much clearer "you just passed Bob's knives and Navajo souvenirs!" billboards. This reading is supported by the fact that the actual product (gin) is displayed in the lower right corner and is hard to see as you're trying to dodge slow moving RTD busses and still make all the green lights on Broadway.
Interpretation three. Your drinking has gone much too far. You've hit on my wife/sister/pet once too often. You've left the halfused contents of your stomach on my front steps again. You need help. Since you won't listen to reason, I bought ad space on a billboard. Yes, you.
Ahhh.