In all the classes, most thought it would be awesome to have ads on school buses when I first asked them. But then I pushed them a little. I asked them about what they thought if ads were on the sides of space shuttles, all three times I got the answer - if they are on the side of the space shuttle it must be a good company or an important product they should know about. So I asked what if it was a candy bar and the company just paid the large amount of money to have it there. They sat there thinking for a while and then decided it wouldn't be that cool.
Part of the school bus thing was my fault, I absent-mindedly used bananas as an example and they couldn't get passed that. Besides they have the Got Milk? ads in the cafeteria they told me.
Perfect timing for this too as we are now getting electronic billboards that will rotate about 6 different ads. And one is on their way to school. I got the "it's awesome" response and then somebody raised their hand to say that he thinks it could cause a lot of wrecks because people would pay too much attention to the billboard.
So first answer was more than likely - "that's cool," "that's awesome," but if you pushed even a little they started thinking beyond the fact that it was flashy or funny.
By the way - the candy really is good. And it smells even better.
Quick observations before my butt takes a nap.
- Teachers are way underpaid for what they have to deal with. My feet, knees and hips HURT.
- I'm exhausted. And apparently the kids were ANGELS today.
- They are very smart... smarter than they think they are. The kids came up with some pretty awesome slogans/tag lines. (I have pictures of some of the ads they did to come.)
- They know the Snickers jingle by heart. Every class could sing it. Which they did, I have audio.
- The class that was supposed to be "remedial," or at least the worst class were some of the smartest... they definitely saw through some of the ads.
- They plagiarize a little too much. One of the teacher's assistants was going through recent papers highlighting all the stuff they copy/pasted from the internet. All I can say is DAMN.
That's it for now. I ate school lunch - not bad. They have "Got Milk" ads in the cafeteria, but I'm hungry so I'm off to eat and probably take a nap. I had to borrow lunch money.
Oh, and my friend is my new hero.
So apparently a cow abduction video has been posted to Google Video and since it's Friday the 13th, I thought I'd share it.
And to tie it back to advertising/design: I'm a dork, so one of the best sites ever - CowAbduction.com. Yeah, I love it. The companion site with the aliens (Brittlactica) wasn't that great and it was too over-the-top in my opinion. But cow abductions? Fan-ta-bulous.
